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After shakedown training
in which Capt. Gallery made the first take off and landing aboard
his new ship, Guadalcanal performed pilot qualifications out of San
Diego, California, and then departed on 15 November 1943, via the
Panama Canal, for Norfolk, Va., arriving on 3 December. There she
became flagship of Task Group 22.3 (TG 22.3), and with her escort
destroyers set out from Norfolk on 5 January 1944 in search of enemy
submarines in the North Atlantic. On 16 January, aircraft from
Guadalcanal sighted three submarines fueling on the surface, and in
a rocket and bombing attack succeeded in sinking U-544. Replenishing
at Casablanca, the task group headed back for Norfolk and repairs,
arriving on 16 February.
Departing again with her escorts on 7 March, Guadalcanal sailed
without incident to Casablanca and got underway from that port on 30
March with a convoy bound for the United States. Scouring the waters
around the convoy on 8 April northwest of Madeira, the task group
discovered U-515 and closed in for the kill. Guadalcanal aircraft
and Chatelain, Flaherty, Pillsbury and Pope made several well
coordinated attacks on the intruder with rockets and depth charges
throughout the night. Losing depth control on the afternoon of 9
April, the submarine was forced to surface amid the waiting ships,
and was immediately devastated by point blank rocket and gunfire. As
F4F Wildcats from Guadalcanal strafed the submarine, her captain,
Kapitaenleutenant Werner Henke, ordered abandon ship and she went to
the bottom.
Again on the night of 10 April, the task group caught U-68 on the
surface in broad moonlight 300 miles south of the Azores and sank
her with depth charges and rocket fire. The convoy arrived safely at
Norfolk on 26 April 1944.
After voyage repairs at Norfolk, Guadalcanal and her escorts
departed Hampton Roads for sea again on 15 May 1944. Two weeks of
cruising brought no contacts, and the task force decided to head for
the coast of Africa to refuel.
Ten minutes after reversing course, however, on 4 June 1944, 150
miles West of Cape Blanco in French West Africa, Chatelain detected
U-505 as it was returning to its base in Brest, France after an
80-day commerce-destroying raid in the Gulf of Guinea. The destroyer
loosed one depth charge attack and, guided in for a more accurate
drop by circling TBF Avengers from Guadalcanal, she soon made a
second. This pattern blew relief valves all over the boat and
cracked pipes in the engine room of the submarine, and rolled the
U-boat on its beam ends. Shouts of panic from the engine room led
Oberleutnant Harald Lange, making his first patrol as her captain,
to believe his boat was mortally wounded. He blew his tanks and
surfaced, barely 700 yards from the USS Chatelain in an attempt to
save his crew. The destroyer fired a torpedo, which missed, and the
surfaced submarine then came under the combined fire of the escorts
and aircraft, forcing her crew to abandon ship.
Captain Gallery had been waiting and planning for such an
opportunity, and having already trained and equipped his boarding
parties, ordered Pillsbury's boat to make for the German sub and
board her. Under the command of Lieutenant, junior grade Albert
David, the party leaped onto the slowly circling submarine and found
her abandoned. David and his men quickly captured all important
papers, code books and the boat's Enigma machine while closing
valves and stopping leaks. As Pillsbury attempted to get a tow-line
on her the party managed to stop her engines. By this time a larger
salvage group from Guadalcanal led by Commander Earl Trosino,
Guadalcanal's Chief Engineer, arrived, and began the work of
preparing U-505 to be towed. After securing the towline and picking
up the German survivors from the sea, Guadalcanal started for
Bermuda with her priceless prize in tow. Abnaki rendezvoused with
the task group and took over towing duties, the group arriving in
Bermuda on 19 June after a 2,500-mile tow .Gallery later apologized
to Trosino, a pre-war Merchant Marine chief engineer by training who
had long since figured out the U-Boat's propulsion system, for not
allowing him as prize captain to bring her in under her own
power.[1]
U-505 was the first enemy warship captured on the high seas by the
U.S. Navy since 1815. For their daring and skillful teamwork in this
remarkable capture, Guadalcanal and her escorts shared in a
Presidential Unit Citation. Lieutenant David received the Medal of
Honor for leading the boarding party, and Captain Gallery received
the Legion of Merit for conceiving the operation that led to U-505's
capture. The captured submarine proved to be of inestimable value to
American intelligence (for the remainder of the war she was operated
by the U.S. Navy as the USS Nemo to learn the secrets of German
U-boats), and its true fate was kept secret from the Germans until
the end of the war. U-505 is the submarine exhibited in the Museum
of Science and Industry (Chicago).
Arriving in Norfolk on 22 June 1944, Guadalcanal spent only a short
time in port before setting out again on patrol. She departed
Norfolk on 15 July and from then until 1 December, she made three
anti-submarine cruises in the Western Atlantic. She sailed on 1
December for a training period in waters off Bermuda and Cuba that
included refresher landings for pilots of her new squadron, gunnery
practice, and anti-submarine warfare drills with Italian submarine
R-9. Guadalcanal arrived Mayport, Fla., for carrier qualifications
on 15 December and subsequently engaged in further training in Cuban
water until 13 February 1945, when she arrived back in Norfolk.
After another short training cruise to the Caribbean, she steamed
into Mayport on 15 March for a tour of duty as carrier qualification
ship, later moving to Pensacola, Florida for similar operations.
After qualifying nearly 4,000 pilots, Guadalcanal returned to
Norfolk, Va., and decommissioned there on 15 July 1946.
Guadalcanal entered the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Norfolk and was
redesignated CVU-60 on 15 July 1955, while still in reserve. She was
finally stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 27 May 1958 and
she was sold for scrap to the Hugo Neu Corp. of New York on 30 April
1959. She was in the process of being towed to Japan for scrapping,
when Capt. Gallery also made the very last landing and take off from
the ship, using a helicopter, off Guantanamo, Cuba.
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