Memorial Bridge Guards Nazi U-boats

371_00 SeacoastNH.com Presents
Historic Portsmouth #371

This started out as another rare shot of MemorialBridge, a tiny one with a unique perspective from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery. The two boats in the foreground are German U-505 and U-3008. Here the story explodes. According to Wikipedia (so correct me, if I’m wrong) U-3008 was among the captured Nazi subs towed to the shipyard in 1945. (Continued below)

Here the German technology was studied. It was put back into active service in the US Navy until the 1950s and eventually scrapped. Amazingly, one of only six German boats captured by Allied forces in WWII, the U-505 survives as a museum ship in Chicago today. Launched in 1940, the U-505 conducted 12 patrols. During one of them, her commander committed suicide in the engine room while his boat was submerged and under attack from British depth charges. The captured vessel yielded extensive information on German secret codes, and then lingered at Kittery for almost a decade after the war where it was stripped and nearly scrapped. It was shipped to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in the mid-1950s for an enormous restoration project and is currently on display there. (Courtesy of Portsmouth Athenaeum)

READ: Uboats Surrender in Portsmouth

Captured Nazi Uboats in Portsmouth Naval Shipyard near Memorial BRidge/ Portsmouth Athenaeum photo

BONUS PHOTOS FROM CHICAGO MUSEUM

371_U505

371_U505_on_display

READER RESPONSES

Your article on U-boats in Portsmouth Harbor implies - or could be interpreted to mean - that one of the four Uboats that entered the harbor was ultimately shipped to Chicago. This is incorrect. The U505, which is currently on display in Chicago, was not one of those four. The U505 was captured by a U.S. Navy task force in June, 1944, almost a year before those four Uboats surrendered.
-- Bill Leslie

Your picture of German subs at portsmouth reminded me visiting with my father,Capt. G.. L. Smith, USN these boats tied up in Portsmouth. Looking on bridge hand rail, I saw a GE searchlight and a Polarus issued by US Bur of ships!

-- Joy Smith Starr, Exeter

I was reading a very interesting story on your Web site about the surrender of U-boats in Portsmouth at the end of WWII and noticed what appears to me to be an error. The first page seems to imply that one of the four subs that surrendered in Portsmouth was later sent to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. U-505, which is still on display there, did in fact spend time in Portsmouth before going to Chicago, but it did not surrender in Portsmouth. It was captured in the Atlantic, taken to Bermuda, and then transferred to Portsmouth after the war.
-- Peter Angerhofer