Ep. 92: U-505 & The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry

[00:00:17] Welcome back to Around the Buoy, broadcasting from the East Passage Boat Ride Studios. I'm Carter Richardson and I'm here with Tyler Fields of Tyler Fields Photography. Tyler, we are fresh off of a movie night, the screening of Hunt for Red October and I gotta tell ya, I knew the movie was good, but it's even better than I remember.

[00:00:40] Tyler Fields I kind of feel like maybe Jane Pickens got like a director's cut or something. I feel like there were scenes in there that were better or longer or more detailed. But it was a great night. I fully expect it's kind of a, I mean, it's kind of a deep cut for movies as far as, you know, popularity goes and I wasn't quite sure.

[00:01:04] Tyler Fields I half expected to be honest that you and I had just rented a movie theater to watch a movie by ourselves. And I was pleasantly surprised. We had a, we had a pretty good, pretty good house. It was pretty good.

[00:01:17] Yeah. 130 people showed up. That's what Alex at Jane Pickens told us is 130 people showed up, paid for tickets. Hugely. We're so thankful to everyone who showed up. But so when you say you think it's a, like an under the radar or not like a deep cut movie, as you called it, I totally disagree. That is right in the wheelhouse of people my age and a little bit older. Again, I'm older than you are.

[00:01:46] But that's the wheelhouse. Like my father-in-law is like, oh yeah. Every time I like flipping through the channels and that movie's on. Hey, grandpa. Grandpa. How old is your father-in-law? He's 82. Yeah. I'm 38. My generation, this is just not on, you know, the tip of people's tongues. Like this is not something that if I talk to my peers and I say, hey, what's your top five naval movies?

[00:02:14] One, they're going to say, I don't have a top five list for naval movies. Pretty much Captain Ron and then it ends. So I was pleasantly surprised. Well, I, the average age, the average age was a little bit higher than, or like for Captain Ron or wind. And it was, it was definitely, I felt very at home with my people during the, during the movie.

[00:02:42] I think there was two, if not three times you got all excited and was like, hey, I think that was my battalion. Remember what? My, my commander. He was. Naval Academy. Like people. Commander Horn. Yeah. Was that him? It wasn't him. Oh yeah. Commander Horn. He was my battalion commander. My, I think my first two years of the Academy and he is in Newport and I have seen him around in Newport. I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, he was a SWO. He would have been, uh, he was a ship driver like myself and he totally would be into something like that.

[00:03:12] Uh, I saw him randomly walking the dog one morning early in the early. I didn't, I, I didn't interact with him. I, he, I was, when I was a plebe, he was a commander and he scared the hell out of me just because he, I, I thought he was like 90,000 years old and had like the salt of Davy Jones on his shoulder. Yeah. I, I haven't spoken to him, but I was, I thought I totally thought it was him. Yeah.

[00:03:37] I would have said, I would have said hello to him if it, if that really was him, I would have reintroduced myself. Well, like Carter said, thank you to everyone who came out. It was, it was a great night and thank you to Ryan and Matt at Latitude Job Brokerage for continuing to sponsor, uh, our movie nights. It's, it's a lot of fun and, uh, we couldn't do without you guys. So thank you again. Ryan and Matt have been great.

[00:04:03] They've obviously done all of our movie nights with us, but they've been involved in quite at the, they have been involved in the film scene here in Newport, uh, supporting a lot of the, uh, Newport film, uh, those films that come to Jane Pickens and various other places. So they're, they are great again, Ryan and Matt and the rest of the team at Latitude. Thank you so much. So what is, what's our next movie going to be? That's where you wouldn't, as we were sitting in there waiting to talk on stage, you weren't allowing me to say anything.

[00:04:34] You were like, no, we can, let's just get through this today. You got to get through the weekend, got to get through your presentation on Wednesday. Now we're now it's okay to talk about it. You have to just one thing at a time. And we got through that. Now it's time to look forward. That's a really good question. I can't step on your own boots, buddy. You just, you can't trip over yourself. We can't, I was thinking down Periscope, but we just did an able movie. So maybe that's maybe a little too soon. Uh-huh.

[00:05:04] We could do that. Robert Redford where he doesn't say any words in the movie. It's about him sailing across. I don't know, man. I made like five minutes into that and gave up on it. I haven't seen it. And I love Robert Redford, but that one, I just, for some reason, I just couldn't do it. Oh, we could do Moana. The kids would love that. Oh, my daughter would be so excited. Well, my kids would be really excited too. We could say we could.

[00:05:34] Moana is at least in the finals on that one. We could also go the opposite way. And, you know, like Star Wars, they always call like the ships in there. That's a part of the Imperial Navy. And so that's a little Navy, you know, we can, so we could go Star Wars route. Can we do Spaceballs? We could do Spaceballs as kind of a real, like, that's like, that would be a stretch on that one. That would be a stretch.

[00:06:03] That's very, very funny. Very funny. Yeah. They do, they do Jaws at the Jane Pickens. So we can't do that one. Can't do that. We can't steal that one. Yeah. All right. So maybe our listeners. Well, we could do, we could do Jaws 3D and that would be okay. We wouldn't be stealing their thunder. We could do that on the Tuesday after they do like their big Jaws weekend. You probably never seen Jaws 3D, have you? No, no. I missed that one. I did. I did. I missed that one. It's awful.

[00:06:34] Well, I mean, what about like message in a bottle? We could get romantic. We could do it for Valentine's Day. It's coming right up. We could roll that out real quickly. And, and, uh, the schooner that, um, oh, what's his name? It's from Bull Durham. What's his name? Kevin. Kevin Costner. Kevin Costner. Kevin Costner. The schooner that he restores is a Malabar that's on, that's in Vineyard Haven. And that's not message in a bottle. Is it? Yeah. No message. Message in a bottle.

[00:07:03] Let's all, I'll go. I'll Google that right now. I've never seen it. I will. I've never seen a bottle. I thought Ryan Gosling was in that message in a bottle. Kevin Costner, Robin Wright Penn and Paul Newman. Paul Newman. Yeah. 1999 and an American romantic drama film. Hmm. Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks. So, you know, it's going to be sparks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:32] But anyway, the, the schooner that they use in that film is in Vineyard Haven and it's use in the film pay for paid for its restoration, I believe. Really? Is it the one we went sailing on? No, but there's like three or four Malabar twos in Vineyard Haven, but it's one of them. I forget if it's actually Malabar two or if it's one of the reproductions. Gotcha. Cool. Sister ships? I don't think it's a reproduction.

[00:08:02] I think they're sisters maybe. I don't know. Okay. All right. But maybe we get a little fan interaction. We'll crowdsource this. We've got, we've got tens and tens of listeners out there. Maybe they could crowdsource and throw a movie our way. No, I think we're going to go message in a bottle. I think that's a good one. The romantics. How are we going to get a movie tie-in? Paul Newman. He's not available anymore. No, he's out. He's out.

[00:08:29] And I watched an interview with Kevin Costner the other day and I'm out on him. That's done. Hashtag is not a political podcast, but I don't think we're going to be calling him. Yeah. I don't know if it's politics. It just sounds like a, well, unpleasant. Yeah. I don't know. We'll think about it. Listeners. If you have a movie idea, let us know. You know how to get in touch with us. You can find us on the interwebs. There you go. I say that.

[00:08:58] I hate catboats. We'll leave that in right for Matt. That's for you. That's for you, Matt. We'll put that in the out cuts. Speaking of catboats. I just, I just, I just found this story while researching this episode, Aries Pond Bowyard, they sold four or five boats to Disneyland, Tokyo. In Tokyo. Yeah. And there is an entire American waterfront village and there's a section that's just Cape Cod and they've got one of their catboats.

[00:09:27] They're in the little fake Harbor. I heard the same thing. I was talking to a gentleman out on the Cape out over by where Aries Pond is. And he said the same thing. There was an article written up in like the Cape Cod times or whatever, but that's really impressive. Way to go, Tony. You know, it's got a schooner and a catboat and a little tugboat. Sounds great. I could totally do that. Just give me a chance, Tony. I mean, it's no Cabot Cove. Let's just, let's just get that straight right now.

[00:09:57] There's no Cabot Cove. Is that murder she wrote? Yes, it is. And here's, here's one for the fans. Only is it murder she wrote, but it's also some of the scenes building, whatever from Jaws, because they've got scenes and buildings from the show.

[00:10:17] But they've also got Ben Gardner's boat from Jaws where Hooper dives down early when they looking for the like first evidence or whatever, where they get drunk. He goes and dives. That's Ben Gardner's boat. And it's in scenes of murder she wrote, if you look closely. So earlier in the intro to this podcast, you were making fun of my 82 year old grandfather. And you're talking about murder she wrote. You are an 82 year old grandfather, my friend.

[00:10:47] No, you're not listening. I said my age group. I'm a thousand years old, buddy. In fact, we need to, we need to get going. I got, um, yeah, Matt walks starts in like five minutes. All right. We're going to get this train back on track. Um, we do have a couple new stories to get to, uh, there's been a couple of fishing accidents off the coast of here of Rhode Island and, uh, Massachusetts as well.

[00:11:16] Um, and then also we're going to talk about a, I guess it's a new sea creature that has been found that has been turned into a delicacy. And just yet again, another thing that we are going to totally take out of the ocean and get rid of because we now think it's a delicacy. So we'll, we'll talk about that. Um, and Tyler, there might just be a surprise news topic that we're going to talk about.

[00:11:41] But before we get to those, I don't like surprises, but before we get to those, uh, we're going to get into our, uh, our guest today. So as, as you know, we've been talking about, we just did a, uh, movie screening of the hunt for red October. And that made us think about something that an actual, um, hunt for red October that happened, uh, towards the end of world war II, the United States was actively trying to capture a, uh, a German.

[00:12:11] And in June of 1944, the opportunity arose, just one of those things where kind of crossroads happen. And the United States for the first time in, in hundreds of years actually captured a German U-boat, U-boat 505. And amazingly enough that that U-boat is now restored and on display at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. And we are going to be talking to John Llewellyn, who is the senior exhibit strategist at the museum.

[00:12:41] We're going to talk about a little history about the, uh, 505 and then also the, the exhibit at the museum. So we'll be right back after this short break.

[00:12:53] As the battle of the Atlantic raged on, the German U-boats wreaked havoc on the Allied fleet. Boasting superior technology and extended range underwater, the U-boat fleet was crippling the Allies' ability to resupply the battle in Europe.

[00:13:22] For this reason, the United States Navy made it a priority to capture a U-boat so they could get a closer look at these advancements. And off the coast of Africa in June of 1944, they got their opportunity. We're joined by John Llewellyn, who is a senior exhibit strategist at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry to talk about the heroin capture of U-505 and the museum's unique exhibit displaying the captured submarine. John, welcome to Around the Bowie and thanks for coming on the show. Great to be here, guys. Thanks for having me. Good deal.

[00:13:51] So, uh, before we get into talk about U-505, let's talk about the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. Uh, there are thousands of science museums worldwide. What makes your museum stand out, uh, out in the crowd from those other museums? Um, I would think that, uh, um, our museum stands out a little bit in the crowd of science museums, uh, in the fact that we're the largest science museum in the Western Hemisphere.

[00:14:19] So our history goes back to 1933 when our founder, Julius Rosenwald, took his son on a trip to Germany and they visited the Deutsches Museum in Munich. And that was really the first hands-on science museum in the world in Munich. So they were so impressed in seeing interactive exhibits and hands-on things that, um, Rosenwald, who was an executive of Sears Roebuck at the time,

[00:14:43] he came back to Chicago and started organizing and fundraising and building support to found our museum back in 1933.

[00:14:52] So ever since then, we've had, um, over 1.5 to 2 million guests annually come through our doors and, uh, check out our exhibits that range everywhere from, uh, a coal mine from 1933 to cutting edge exhibits about energy, climate science, um, material science, biology, all the way to our U-505 submarine. What's your title? What's your, what's your, uh, title at, at the museum?

[00:15:20] I am a senior exhibit strategist here at MSI and I've been here for 25 years. So my background is in exhibit design and content development. So I help work with teams and we put together the stories and the research and make it all into a compelling experience for guests. So you have a role in some of those large aircraft hanging from your ceiling. Yes, we just redid, um, well, we have a number of, uh,

[00:15:46] uh, warbirds. We have a, a Stuka, a Spitfire, um, as well as a couple earlier planes. Uh, we've got a, a Wright Flyer replica, Curtis Jenny, a Boeing B-40, all these, uh, a very early airliner and, uh, airmail plane. But we also have one of the first Boeing 727s from 1964. And we recently rehabbed that exhibit. That's all, uh, that's our exhibit called Take Flight.

[00:16:11] It's about commercial aviation and how that works, the ins and outs of, um, airports and aircraft and all the science behind that and the careers and stuff. So there's really something for everyone here. That's what's bigger, the 505 or the 727? The 505 is a little bit longer. That's 252 feet long. Luckily that has its own underground gallery. Um, it was custom made for it. It's a little heavier too, luckily. Oh yeah, much heavier.

[00:16:40] Yeah. All right. Well, let's start with the basics. The German U-boats were some of the most effective weapons throughout World War I and World War II. What made submarines, and not just of the German Navy, but submarines in general, such potent weapons? Really the, the biggest thing about a submarine is just sort of the most obvious thing is it's invisible when it's underwater.

[00:17:05] So it has that element of surprise and freedom of navigation and stealth that, um, really no other technology, um, could accomplish before, um, high tech stealth type technology.

[00:17:19] So just that element of surprise and being underwater and that psychological advantage of not knowing where your enemy might be, um, as well as the deadly torpedoes and all the armaments, those go together to, you know, even to this day, um, create a fearsome weapon. What other navies during this, this period had submarines that were at least had submarines in use? During World War II. Wow.

[00:17:49] Um, the Japanese definitely had subs. Um, I'm strangely not much of an expert on the U S submarine program. Um, it definitely was nowhere near, um, where the Germans were. They were really the cutting edge in submarine technology going back to World War I. Um, so the battle of the Atlantic blockading, um, North American allies from resupplying Britain and European allies that had, uh, a similar.

[00:18:18] Precedent during World War I. Um, and, uh, you know, in the short gap between World War I and World War II, the Germans realized that, uh, you know, preventing the U S Canada, um, and others from supplying great Britain and the European allies with material and food and everything they needed to survive would be a strategic advantage. Um, so that, um, um, grew into the, uh, the U boat threat during World War II and the battle of the Atlantic.

[00:18:48] The U boats sunk hundreds and hundreds of U S, uh, uh, and allied, uh, merchant marine ships of, uh, many nations. So, you know, the North Atlantic is littered with wrecks and, uh, grave sites of all those, uh, military encounters that happened. So it was a really, um, huge, uh, force on the German side that made it really difficult for the allies. Give us a little history about, uh, U 505.

[00:19:17] Uh, what did she do leading up to that day in June in 1944? So the U 505 was built in 1940 or the keel was laid in Hamburg in 1940 at Deutsche Werft, launched in May of 1941. Uh, so the U 505 went through three different captains. So the first captain, uh, Captain Lieutenant Alex Olaf Löwe in command.

[00:19:42] Um, each one of the captains had a different, um, on insignia painted on the conning tower of the boat too, which is also interesting. So Löwe means lion in German. So there was a lion painting on the, uh, on the conning tower. And then, uh, the second one was, uh, Corporate Lieutenant Peter Tschetsch.

[00:20:03] Uh, and then, um, the third one took command in 19, in 1943, um, Paul Meyer, um, and then Harold Lange. Harold Lange was the final commander, um, who was commanding the boat, um, in June of 1944 when the U 505 was captured. So, um, U 505, uh, was, uh, a member of 12 different patrols.

[00:20:29] It sunk eight ships totaling over 45,000, uh, gross tons. Um, so those included American, British, Norwegian, Dutch, and Colombian ships. So it was, uh, it was one of many type nine U-boats that were, uh, uh, going around the Atlantic and trying to harass and sink as much merchant shipping as possible.

[00:20:52] So, so I, I don't think any telling of the 505's history would be complete without talking about Rear Admiral Dan Gallery, Daniel Gallery. Who, who was Admiral Gallery, and how did he fit into this whole, this whole scenario? Well, at the time, uh, Captain Gallery, uh, was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, uh, Chicago boy, born and raised. He grew up on the south side, very close to where our museum is today.

[00:21:21] Um, so out of the Naval Academy, he became, uh, uh, an aviator. And then he commanded, uh, a seaplane base or a couple of different seaplane bases in Scotland and Iceland. And he had developed experience sinking U-boats. So from the air, he knew how to, um, locate, track, and then, um, finally, uh, sink U-boats.

[00:21:45] So as the war kind of continued on, um, we, the military decided, hey, you know, why don't we try and capture one of these U-boats? You know, because they are a treasure trove of technology, secrets, codes, um, all kinds of intelligence. Um, so Gallery and his unit actually trained. They did training, um, simulations and exercises to try and capture a U-boat.

[00:22:14] So it was not just kind of a flash in the pan improvised, um, affair, even though there was a lot of adaptability and kind of quick action and everything. That it was definitely part of the plan to capture a U-boat.

[00:22:29] And then, so in June of 1944, I don't want to get ahead of the story, but, uh, when we finally started to track U-505 near, uh, West Africa, that plan, um, fell into place with, uh, uh, task group with the USS Guadal Canal aircraft carrier. Were they looking for a 505 individually, or was that more of a target of opportunity? They were looking for us. It was a little bit of a target of opportunity.

[00:22:54] So they would go, uh, they would sort of do search patterns or they would do maneuvers in various sectors of the ocean. Um, and they just had a contact with a boat that happened to be U-505. So 505 didn't, to my knowledge, have any, um, special status that, uh, that we were out to particularly get them. But, uh, this was the, the one that was in the right place at the right time, so to speak.

[00:23:24] It, it seems hard to believe the, uh, but the capture of 505 was the first time that the Navy had captured, uh, an enemy ship since the war of 1812. Um, fast forward a little more than 130 years and the U.S. Navy gets a second chance. What talked to us about, so they, they were tracking it and all of a sudden they, they recognize that this is a U-boat. So how did, how did, how did the, the day progress? How, how did the capture happen?

[00:23:49] So, so, um, the USS, um, the Guadalcanal is this hunter killer task group 22.3. So the hunter killer task groups were, uh, uh, an organizational, uh, concept from the U.S. Navy, which was specifically hunter killer. You know, their, uh, their goal is right in the name. So they're circulating in the Eastern Atlantic off of coast of Mauritania and Western Sahara.

[00:24:14] Um, they came into contact, they got a sonar ping of something down there. So they started kind of, uh, sailing a different grid pattern to try and intercept or, or follow, um, this, uh, sonar contact. Um, also part of the Guadalcanal hunter killer task group was a destroyer called the Pillsbury. Um, there were also, um, aircraft naturally, you know, attached to the Guadalcanal.

[00:24:44] So they, they scrambled some of these planes. I believe they were TBF Avengers, uh, torpedo bombers, et cetera. So they made contact. Um, they, they could see the shadow of the U-boat visually from the air underwater because apparently, um, we've got a, we've got a movie in the museum, uh, in the exhibit of Admiral Gallery and, uh, Captain, uh, Lange, you know, speaking in 1964.

[00:25:12] So they recount the entire day, 20 years later. So it was fascinating. So Lange is saying, um, the water was so clear that day in that part of the Atlantic and the sun was really high that even though U-505 dove, um, to avoid, they were originally at periscope depth and they looked around, they could see a couple of ships.

[00:25:32] So they went deep, but, uh, by the time the airplanes got in the air, um, the U-505, even though it had dove to, uh, many, many meters, it was still visible as a shadow in the water. So the, um, the, um, the aircraft started to lay down, um, uh, small fire, like 50 millimeter into the water, um, just to kind of mark, um, where that, uh, location might've been.

[00:25:58] Um, and that was all a coordinated effort to allow the USS Chatelaine, which was part of that task group to throw some hedgehogs out there and start dumping a couple of depth charges to hopefully, um, start damaging and force U-505 to the surface. Um, so they continued doing that for 10 to 12 minutes.

[00:26:19] Um, the depth charges and hedgehogs got closer and closer and it, uh, one of the depth charges damaged the rudder control, the electrical rudder controls, uh, on the 505. So the thing was stuck, uh, going in a loop. So Lange decided to, um, to surface because they were, um, experiencing damage. They were going to abandon ship and scuttle it.

[00:26:44] So as Lange said, they, they flooded the ballast tanks with air. They did a crash ascent and they bob to the surface like a cork, kind of like when you're scuba diving, they tell you not to fill up your BCD when you're deep. Because as you know, like as you go towards the surface of the water, the volume of your air expands and you go up faster and faster and faster.

[00:27:09] And that's terrible for a diver, but for the U-boat, it wasn't too harmful for it, except it surfaced to be, uh, surrounded by five allied ships and all kinds of airplanes in the air. So, uh, Captain Gallery told his crews to, uh, not shoot anything big at the boat, at the U-boat, uh, just to, um, keep it on the surface and encourage the, um, the crew to abandon ship and surrender.

[00:27:36] Uh, they didn't want to sink it, uh, naturally. So, um, this took 10 to 12 minutes, as I said. Um, so, and then once the boat was on the surface, they kept shooting around it and shooting, uh, small arms fire onto the, uh, top sides of the U-505. Just to harass them and, uh, and make them give up. The U-505 did actually get off a couple shots.

[00:28:01] It shot a torpedo or two when it was on the surface to try and naturally, uh, defend itself and, uh, hurt the, the U.S. uh, flotilla. But both of those went wide. None of those, uh, torpedoes hit anything. Um, so the, the U-505 is on the surface. The crew, uh, Captain Lange was the first one out of the hatch on the conning tower.

[00:28:29] Um, one of the crewmen actually got shot and killed, um, on the deck as they were jumping into the water and getting into life rafts. There were a couple different life rafts. There was a main life raft on the top sides toward the bow that had, um, a pretty large capacity. The crewmen deployed that through Captain Lange and that he got, uh, got to go on that. And then the rest of them were either hanging on that main life raft or on another one.

[00:28:59] And in the, uh, uh, all the shooting and excitement, one of the, um, German crew, uh, was shot to death. But the rest of them, um, survived. They went to the life raft and then were eventually, uh, picked up and, uh, taken as POWs. Um, so the job wasn't over. So this boat is, we have photos of the U-boat. It's, um, on the surface. It's got, it's basically sinking in the stern.

[00:29:26] The crew were instructed to scuttle it. So they had to pull, uh, a sea strainer cover off, which is, you know, that intakes the fresh water for engine cooling. They took the sea strainer off. So the seawater is shooting up in there and the, you know, it's going to flood the boat and sink it. So the allies can't capture it. And there were also scuttle charges, which are small, um, I would imagine probably grenade

[00:29:53] type stuff, uh, small explosives that were rigged up as part of the design of the ship for exactly that purpose to scuttle it and, um, prevent capture. So there was a boarding party. So this was the first time since 1815 that, uh, that a U S Navy ship had given the, um, the, the command all borders away, borders away.

[00:30:18] So they got in a couple of whale boats, raced over to the U 505, which was maybe a couple hundred yards away from the, uh, the Pillsbury. Uh, they started to board and there, you know, since they had done their training, they knew their first job was a prevent the boat from sinking. So Zinon Lukosius, one of our local, um, uh, naval sailors from, from Chicago here, a Lithuanian boy.

[00:30:44] Um, he was the first one down the hatch and he went straight for, uh, where he saw the water coming in. And luckily he found the lid to the sea strainer, which is basically like the top of a waffle iron. We have the piece, um, in the exhibit. Uh, he went down to where the water was gushing in and put that cover back on, uh, luckily before it was, uh, too late.

[00:31:08] Um, but the other thing is, had the Germans just tossed that strainer cover just across the companionway or in the next bulkhead over, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have got the submarine. We would have lost it right there. So many. Yeah, exactly. So many things went, uh, just the, the wrong way for the, for the Germans in this. Yeah. Like he was lucky to find the sea strainer and as well, his cohorts, the other, I think

[00:31:37] other five or six, uh, boarding party members, their job was to fan out and disarm or locate, um, any other, uh, charges or booby traps or any other scuttling, um, type efforts. And not all of the scuttle charges were, were even armed. So it seemed like the, the U-505 crew was in a real hurry to get the, get off the boat. Like can't blame them. One can imagine.

[00:32:05] Uh, so luckily none of those, I believe none of those charges went off. And in any case, the, uh, hull was not, uh, holds by any of them. So. Yeah. It's amazing that there's a surviving crew member still, still around and it's in Chicago. Is he able to visit his submarine on occasion? Yes. We've had the, um, we've had the crew here multiple times.

[00:32:31] So they used to come, uh, if not every year, generally around June 4th, the, uh, anniversary of the capture. Um, and we've honored them a number of times that we always have, uh, uh, summer is a submarine or cruise and, uh, naval folks coming in almost every day. Um, we've got great lakes, uh, Naval training center just up the road in, uh, North Chicago, Illinois. And we get, uh, cadets down here visiting all the time and some of them volunteer and do interpretive stuff as well.

[00:33:01] So it's really cool. I haven't visited the museum yet. I will be out there in April and I'm looking forward to it, but. Uh, I've been able to, in the, my research, find photos from the day of her capture from down below. And, you know, the, the sub is just disheveled their stuff everywhere. And obviously it had been on a patrol before that. So it wasn't in pristine condition to begin with. Um, but it looks much better today than it did in, uh, 1944 for, for, for sure.

[00:33:31] Yeah. There was a lot of, well, even to go back, like if you can imagine being a cruise, crewman on the U-505 before this, uh, before the capture even happened, these guys, you'd have 59 crew on this 252 foot boat. Um, that's underwater that inside is much, much smaller. You'd like the, the amount of cramping inside these boats is crazy.

[00:33:57] It's every time I go in there, I, I tell people 59 crewmen worked on this. Like you can't imagine stuffing 59 people on there working and they would, um, run three shifts. There was only like, um, 14 bunks in the torpedo room. You're sleeping under and over torpedoes. And, you know, when one guy's, when one guy wakes up the next, the retiring, uh, watch goes right to bed. So it's the hot bunk and it was just hot and stanky and smelly.

[00:34:26] And these guys would be on patrol for weeks, even months at a time out in the ocean, whether they get resupplied or come into port. So you're literally in a sardine can with 58 of your closest friends. So like it, it probably was a little nasty, even on a normal day. And then like we, they would have food stashed everywhere, supplies, every little nook and

[00:34:49] cranny filled with, uh, hanging, uh, stacks of potatoes, ham, sausage, just every cubic inch they tried to use. Um, so just imagine that. And then, yeah, I'm sure it was, it, yeah, I've seen the pictures and it was a real, um, kind of a wreck after the capture. Um, and then I start to think about the romance of submarine warfare or, you know, that, that whole life.

[00:35:19] I just watched DOS boot. I was going to say, no one realized that it's just, it's not somewhere I want to do Ben. No, it's awful. Even on, even, you know, on a cruising sailboat, you know, after a few days, if you're at any kind of a seaway, you know, the potato chips fall over anything that's made of glass is shattered. So you learn that and tie everything down, but it's still like, unless you're constantly working to keep things ship shape, it entropy takes over and it's a real mess.

[00:35:49] Very quickly. Yeah. Well, the, the capture of a German U-boat would have been front page news, bold letters above the fold. So keeping a story like that quiet in the age of social media seems like an impossibility, but even during world war two, hiding a 250 foot submarine had to have been difficult. So, so where did the Navy stash their new boat and what did they do with the crew?

[00:36:13] Well, the crew were taken aboard one or more of the ships of the Guadalcanal task group, and then eventually taken to a POW camp in Ruston, Louisiana, where they stayed for the rest of the war. And then interestingly enough, on the German side, the crewmen's crew members, families were notified

[00:36:38] that, that they were lost in action because as far as the, the German Navy was concerned, like it was sunk. These guys are dead. They're gone. Um, so they didn't know that it was captured. Um, the U-boat was taken under tow by the task group and then eventually, um, towed all the way to Bermuda, where it was hidden for the rest of the war. Um, and it was top secret. Uh, nobody was allowed to talk about it.

[00:37:05] And naturally that secret didn't get out because it wasn't in the paper. Um, so it wasn't until right after VE day in May of 45 that, um, that the, the story came out that we had captured a German U-boat. So after, after VE day, it was in the papers. And then, um, also luckily on the German side, all those families, uh, got to be reunited eventually with their, um, their crewmen.

[00:37:33] So that was a surprise, you know, people coming back from what you thought was, uh, was death in the war. Um, so that I can imagine like the poignancy and power of that moment too. Um, it was a special circumstance because they, I believe they went to a PO, a POW camp, but they went to the back 40 of that POW camp and they were isolated.

[00:37:57] Um, and it was, I guess, uncommon is the way to put it, if not illegal, but they did not give them access to the red cross and, you know, things like that weren't, weren't given to them as just, uh, uh, calculation of war, I guess. Right. Yeah. The, the red cross, they were not, uh, notified of that. So yeah, a calculation of war secrecy.

[00:38:23] I don't know, uh, what the laws are around that, but apparently that was, uh, deemed necessary to keep, uh, keep that intelligence secret. So what kind of, so the, the boat gets tored, the sub gets towed to Bermuda. What kind of information did the Americans learn from capturing the 505? Um, was German technology that much more advanced, uh, than other, other navies and the U S navies and the submarine warfare?

[00:38:50] It was, um, so in Bermuda, the Navy went over it and kind of, I don't know to what degree they dissected the ship, but they definitely inspected everything because it was a potential treasure trove of information. Not only were there, uh, two Enigma machines on the boat. So the Enigma code machine was a, a formidable, uh, here to her to forethought unbreakable code

[00:39:18] during World War II, but, uh, different allies had been working on cracking Enigma for a while, even since before the war broke out, you know, and I looked into it a little bit. Um, the Polish started trying to crack the code even before the war, because they were aware of the existence of this code. So they had a few mathematicians working on that. The UK had also captured code books and other materials prior to the U 505 being captured.

[00:39:48] So these little bits of the puzzle of Enigma were, were coming into the allies' possession. And then, uh, a couple of the Enigma machines were, uh, on board U 505. And as I understand it, um, the ones that were found on the U 505 helped understand the navigational aspects of the Enigma code and their communication. So it was one more piece of the puzzle to help, uh, understand what the Germans were up to.

[00:40:16] Um, also, um, there is a lot of good information in notebooks and folders of tactics, uh, other code type stuff. One of the really advanced pieces of technology, uh, on the U 505 was the torpedo guidance system. So the, like I said, the Germans had been at this, uh, submarine game for much longer than pretty much any other country, uh, as well as the torpedoes and the guidance system.

[00:40:44] So getting a couple of those torpedoes that had not been fired off yet. And like we're pristine, um, was a real, um, boon to our, uh, knowledge of that technology. So after going through all of that stuff and, uh, uh, combing it for, um, that intelligence, the boat was kind of in limbo for a while, both to keep the secret and to, you know, like,

[00:41:10] what are you going to do, like scrap it or reuse it during the war? Like it was a little bit in limbo until after the war. It's not something you necessarily want to get rid of. It's like, Hey, this is kind of, kind of cool. Let's just not sink it. Yeah. So after Germany surrendered, you, you mentioned that the Navy had taken it to Portsmouth, um, New Hampshire, which is right up the road from us here. Um, at that point,

[00:41:35] did they have any need or use for it? It's unclear what, what use it had other than just scrap value. I, there was some talk of using it as a, uh, a target or a decoy for, uh, for training practice. Um, but luckily around this time, um, Admiral Gallery, um, was in talks with, um, Major Lennox Lohr, who was the president of our museum at that time. Um,

[00:42:05] our museum has had, had always wanted and planned to display a submarine of some sort, like ever since 1933, when the first plans were drawn up. So you see old charcoal concept drawings and renderings from the early exhibit designers from the thirties about a submarine exhibit. And this was like long before we had, we wanted to capture a submarine too. So what in those early drawings, what submarines were they using in the, in the, uh,

[00:42:33] it was just, it was just a very, uh, I wouldn't say sketchy, but it's like, imagine a charcoal drawing that just has some sort of bulbous shape in a space. So they wanted to, um, someday get some kind of a submarine from wherever, because that was a big new technology. And we always, we like to feature big technology and like works of industry and science, you know, we've got a number of trains and, uh, airplanes. Um, so just, it was just kind of like one of these big,

[00:43:03] big things. Let's build a big gallery. Let's put something big in it. So why not a submarine? I don't know how much farther the thinking or the detail went beyond that, but Hey, we're going to get a submarine someday. Yeah, that would be cool. So dream, dream big and dreams can come true and look, look, look what happened. Yeah, exactly. So, uh, at some point Admiral gallery was back home here in Chicago and, uh,

[00:43:27] met up with major lore, our, uh, our CEO at the time. And that conversation happened. And, uh, the, the, it was the inception of the idea, Hey, let's bring the U 505 to Chicago. So they started, uh, raising support, raising funds. They raised a whole $250,000 to bring the U 505 from Portsmouth up the St. Lawrence Seaway, um, eventually to Chicago. And that didn't happen until 1954. So

[00:43:56] it was multiple years, you know, in, in development and, uh, and, and fundraising and all that. What was that about again? 250 grand. That's not enough to restore a 16 foot boat these days. That's amazing. I know. Yeah. Like I wish, yeah, you know, it wouldn't take much, but yeah, today it would be a little bit more, but yeah, the $250,000 to bring it all the way up the Seaway through Lake Ontario,

[00:44:24] Erie, Huron into Lake Michigan. Um, during the summer of 1954, it was put on parade and display all the way around the waterfront here in Chicago, along the lakefront by Navy pier. And then it was brought through our lock up the Chicago river and people had visited. It was a big, uh, fanfare event. And then eventually in 1954, later in the summer, I believe it was in August, it was brought down here to the

[00:44:51] South side, which, um, just a little bit of geography. So our museum is about 200 yards from the beach of Lake Michigan. We're on the South side of Chicago, South of where the river is, but we've got a beach, um, and we dredged out a little bit of a canal leading up to the beach and built a, a Marine railway, basically up the beach across Lakeshore drive, which is a four lane highway. And then into

[00:45:19] our backyard at the museum. So all that was built. Uh, they closed Lakeshore drive for a couple of weeks to accommodate all of this fanfare. They basically pushed it up on the beach, hydraulically raised it onto, uh, a temporary Marine railway and then dragged it across the drive. There are some great pictures of it. You see people like, uh, on the beach wearing their, you know, swimming trunks, watching this German submarine going across. That was really quite a thing. And a lot of people

[00:45:49] remember that people, uh, who were, you know, alive at the time. That was one of the coolest things ever to see that happen. That feed alone should be an exhibit in the MSI, just the whole technology and the industry to get that to happen. Right. And there is a little section within our exhibit about exactly that. First of all, how it got here, how it got into our backyard. And then just as cool,

[00:46:15] I think back in 2004, 2005, we brought it around into its own underground indoor gallery. So the boat was sitting outside from 1954 to 2005, um, kind of in the backyard of the museum, just out, out in the rain, out in the snow and you know, anybody with a car, you know, it's going to rust. So it was not

[00:46:39] doing that well being out in the weather. So roundabout early two thousands, we started another capital campaign and planning, um, to bring it inside. So we eventually dug basically an underground tub that kind of looks like the submarine nests that with the Germans built, like in Lorient, like in France where the subs would, would hide. It's a little bit reminiscent of that. Uh, we brought,

[00:47:05] brought it around on rollers again, built an elaborate structure to lower it down into this concrete tub. That's four stories underground and then built a roof over it. So it's essentially a green roof. So it's right under the grassy front yard of the museum. You can't see it from outside, but it's underground there. And the indoor gallery that we created in 2005 is, uh, first of all, it protects

[00:47:31] the boat a lot better than sitting out there, but it also allowed us to create a much better exhibit experience because when the boat was in our backyard, you couldn't really publicly get outside and check out the exterior of the boat very well. Um, instead you would walk through a little, um, hallway into the side of the boat. You could take an interior tour, but it was hard to get really a feel for what the overall size of the appearance of the boat was from the outside.

[00:47:59] So now that it's indoors, you can walk all the way around it. There's exhibits surrounding the exterior of the boat. You can touch it and you could also take a tour and onboard tour inside too. So, you know, we have, uh, facilitators that would, will tell you the whole story of the, everything leading up to the capture, the technology, what, what it was like to live on the U-boat and, um, everything is restored. It's not, it's not restored to like brand new the day it

[00:48:27] was built, but it's, it's in good enough shape that the lighting is accurate. All the parts are, are accurate. By the time that she came under the museum's care, she had been damaged in battle. She'd been half scuttled, torn apart by the Navy. I mean, tell me a little bit more about what the condition was when the museum got her originally. It was a little, it was a little beat up. Um, so there, there was a, uh, a serious dent,

[00:48:56] like on the port side near the, um, it's not a gunnel, a submarine doesn't have a gunnel, but the upper hull on the port side had, uh, it had collided, it bumped into the Pillsbury during the towing. So it had a major dent up there that got bumped out. Um, and then to this day, there are shrapnel wounds and, you know, small arms, bullet holes all over the

[00:49:22] conning tower and, and, uh, damage from the battle and the capture on the exterior. Um, the interior, I'm not sure how much of that was actually torn out other than just being dirty and then disarray because largely most of the systems, gauges, accommodations, furnishings, and everything inside the boat are still original. Um, I was talking to one of our security guards,

[00:49:49] um, who happens to be a real expert on the U-505 cause he's, that's been his area for years and years. Apparently the, the pneumatic system or a good, good portion of the pneumatic system control system still works. Our former transportation curator, um, actually started up one of the engines a few years ago. This was 15 years ago and it started. Yeah. So the port side engine worked at least for a

[00:50:16] few minutes. So it's generally still there. So mostly it was exterior damage and sort of like handling damage on the outside. Um, not much of the interior was ever torn out or scrapped or lost to my knowledge. And then, um, so that was the, when it originally came here, as I said, like, since the boat sat out in the backyard for 50 years, we did identify a certain, well, a significant amount of

[00:50:45] metal erosion rusting away of structural pieces that would make it difficult to move the boat without it, uh, uh, having structural problems. So a lot of structural steel was replaced and reinforced prior to when we moved it, um, like going into the, the ballast tanks and just some of the pressure hull had eroded quite a bit. Most of that stuff was kind of like inside and hidden though, just kind of reinforcing it to,

[00:51:12] to keep it structural. There were also, um, wild cats that, that lived on board the boat, but still outside. So we got rid of the kitty cats and then, uh, reinforced the steel, uh, refinished it. We, uh, uh, our original transportation curator, uh, Keith Gill, he did research into the

[00:51:35] exact color scheme inside and out because after the war, the Navy gave it a different coat of paint. They just gave it haze gray or whatever they had around. And that was different from the original German color. So we restored it to the original exterior paint colors outside in and inside, um, using, you know, paint chip analysis. So that's realistic to how it was when it was brand new.

[00:52:00] How does the 505 fit into the overall museum's mission? I mean, what it's, it's odd to have, and it's not odd, but it's, it's having a U-boat, uh, in, in on display for so long. How does that, how does that fit in with the museum's mission? I'm glad you asked. So here at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, our mission is to inspire the inventive genius in everyone. So that has a very large umbrella of inventive genius, allowing

[00:52:30] people to understand science, engineering, how things are invented, how can we make things better and innovate? Um, it is a little bit of a weird thing because it's more of a, it's a, a history story. It's a, a war memorial above all. Um, but really the way that it fits into our mission is about that

[00:52:55] can do spirit of, on the one hand, the capture and the heroic kind of like daredevil aspect of that story, which is, you know, still compelling, but then going into the technology of the sub and the science behind developing all of these things. I mean, we don't, we generally don't emphasize um, too much defense stuff in our content other than, uh, the U-505. Um, but that inventive genius

[00:53:23] shows up in a lot of different ways in this, uh, in this boat. And then also there are a lot of interactivity around the boat about how buoyancy works, how the sub was controlled. So people can get their hands on how the actual mechanisms work and how the science scientific principles work between navigating undersea, how do you, how does sonar work, how do guidance systems work? So there's a science connection to a lot of different things here. And then another aspect of our museum is just

[00:53:51] our variety and eclectic nature. So we have a giant model railroad layout that I designed called, uh, the great train story. It shows downtown Chicago on one end, downtown Seattle on another end. It's HO scale, and it covers 2200 scale miles of a train journey across the country. And it's in this, um, good sized transportation gallery. And right above it is our Boeing 727 attached to the balcony. So we like

[00:54:21] bringing these big stories in and connecting people's lives to science and engineering and design. So that'd be cool to see. I've taken that train trip a couple of times. Oh, really? Yeah. Nice to relive it in a HO scale. That'd be great. It's a lot more comfortable to walk around it in our building rather than sit, uh, sit in, uh, my, not North Dakota for six hours. I froze the train.

[00:54:46] It was so cold in mine off the trains, uh, brakes froze and we sat there and I was watching. I think it was my, not, it was my, not that it froze, but if I remember correctly, there's, um, gas or oil rigs out, uh, in the, in the planes. And you could just see the, the fire on top of all the stacks along the horizon. I sat and watched that for like 12 hours. It was great.

[00:55:12] How many visitors that same journey to doing research for that trip? Uh, yeah, I did it. Yeah, it was, it was, it was great, but the chair, I didn't have a room. So I had a chair and that was, that was a long trip. So are, how do visitors, how are they able to experience U-505? Do you have just open access to the, to the sub or are there tours? How were people able to,

[00:55:38] to experience the submarine? So the, the U-505 experience is in kind of two layers. So the main part of it, the, this, this exhibit that's all around the boat showing the context of the battle of the Atlantic, what led up to the capture, um, and the exterior of the boat, all the exhibits in the gallery around the outside, that's all included in museum admission. So for everybody who comes here can walk around the boat and get that whole story. But for those who want to take the onboard tour,

[00:56:09] it's a, it's an additional ticket, but it's very worth doing because we have facilitators who know even more than what I do about it. And they can put you in that moment in June of 1944, when you're onboard that boat, imagine you're the crew and you can go through all of the different, uh, cabins and areas of the interior of the U-505 and experience that. So it's, it's definitely really cool, but everybody can do the exhibit as a whole. Uh, the onboard tour is an

[00:56:38] extra ticket, but you can do it anytime the museum is open. Can you seriously walk through like from torpedo room to engine room or? The very aft engine room, you can look into it, but it has a, uh, uh, uh, it's roped off because some of the areas are really well, none of the U-505 I would say is ADA accessible, unfortunately, because it's, you know, it's a, a war machine from the 1940s. So you have to be able to walk

[00:57:06] pretty well to navigate your way through it. And then back in the engine room, it's, it's really cramped. So you can kind of look into it, but not actually walk into it. Same with the conning tower. We don't let people climb up a ladder through a little, you know, 13 inch hatch. How many visitors does the sub have a year? Do you know off the top of your head? Um, we, we don't have an actual count of, um, of the exhibit as a whole every year,

[00:57:33] we get 1.5 million, roughly around a million and a half guests of the museum in general during the year. And I would say probably two thirds of our guests go to the exhibit. I would say we have at least 35,000 people through the U-boat, the onboard tour every year. Just a couple of people at a time. That's a, yeah, it's like, uh, it's a strong stream at a time.

[00:57:59] Yeah. There's a, there's 14 to 16 at a time. Yeah. There's a historian who I've come across with other, um, research that we've done. And he makes a, uh, he posted a photo of the plaque on the side of the sub that says 30, whatever people max entry at a time, um, federal government, yada, yada, yada.

[00:58:21] And he makes a, a comparison that there was 60 guys, 59 guys on there in time of war, but it's unsafe to have more than 30. Yeah. How times have changed. Unless you enlist or one third of you need to be in your, at the, in the bunks at a time. That's right. Yeah. That's how they get around the number is that some people are sleeping. They don't, they don't count. They're not counting.

[00:58:46] Yeah. Well, um, so you, you talked about the, the, the train display and the 727, um, a museum of this kind of scope with a U-boat and a 727, they've got to have from large to small, what other kind of exhibits either permanent or kind of, uh, the, you know, the, um, temporary exhibits do you have on display these days? Uh, we've got a new exhibit called notes to neurons. It's in our brand new,

[00:59:14] um, interactive studio. It's in immersive projected space. So you walk through and you learn about all the connections between the brain and music. So using music is kind of a lens to explore brain science. Um, so it's, it's really funny. You go through and you're completely immersed, um, in projections, music, and there's lots of interactivity and, uh, participatory stuff in that. So that's brand new. I think the Grateful Dead did that, but do you get LSD tablets at the museum too?

[00:59:43] Yeah. You have to bring your own. The sphere. It's, it's, it's almost on the scale of the sphere, but more educational. And we just reopened our Henry Crown Space Center. We have, um, a lot of great NASA artifacts. We have the Apollo eight command module. We have a SpaceX cargo dragon. The actual command module? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. I worked on that. We just redid that. We just redid the exhibit completely and it opened this past May

[01:00:10] and we're really excited about it. So we have the Apollo eight. We have one of the lunar module trainers that was used at Kennedy space center by all 12 of the Apollo astronauts. So that's in a training setting. That's what they use to rehearse for the, um, uh, lunar operations. We've got a Mercury capsule, the Aurora seven and, uh, all kinds of other stuff, all about space interactives.

[01:00:36] We have this cool thing called eyes on the solar system from NASA and JPL. So you can look at every spacecraft that's out there and what they're doing right now and what their position is. So, um, um, a lot of really interesting stuff happening in space. And that interestingly relates to the U-boat too. It's a different kind of space capsule and, you know, that cramped aspect of exploration and harsh environments and all that. Exactly. Harsh environments. Yeah. Thank you. Um, where can

[01:01:04] people follow along, uh, to learn more about the museum? Obviously, uh, the opposite website, but are you guys on social media, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok and stuff like that? Yeah. We're on all the socials at hashtag MSI Chicago and our website is MSI Chicago.org. So we keep that updated quite often. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time,

[01:01:29] John. Uh, it's been interesting to learn more about the five Oh five, uh, as Tyler said, he's heading out this summer. It has been absolutely forever. I think I was, I think I was 10 when I was, uh, I would have been like in the early eighties when I went, uh, I remember walking outside, walking outdoors and seeing the sub when I was a kid, it's been forever. Would love to see it again. Yeah. You guys definitely have to come down. You'll be, uh, blown away not only by the U-505,

[01:01:55] but hopefully by everything else that's new. And, uh, yeah, it'd be great to have you. Cool. Well, thank you again, John. Really appreciate it. All right. Thanks guys.

[01:02:05] Welcome back to around the buoy. Um, thank you to John that it truly is one of those stories. The five Oh five stories, truly one of those stories that you could probably sit down and like just

[01:02:34] hear about four hours on end. I think that I'd love to go back as now as an adult, love to go back to the museum and take it all in again. Well, I mean, I've been looking forward to going to that museum for, for years, but, um, I am now double down on excitement. It's, uh, yeah, it's an amazing story. And it's an amazing piece of history that has survived the things that it did and its crew did.

[01:02:59] Um, you know, it made history in so many terrible and devastating ways and to be able to go in and to, to go through the boat. I think it's going to be incredible. Well, I, there, there's so many personal aspects about this story. Um, the, the fact that the, the German U-boat commander had had the opportunity to come back and see the boat and meet some of the

[01:03:24] crew and, and, and reunite, uh, in the museum is really spec, uh, really spectacular. I've heard multiple stories of, um, you know, um, like an American pilot and a Japanese pilot realizing they meet and they realized that they were in the same air battle over the Pacific and that kind of stuff is to think of how far you travel from that day that it was captured to the point where you are

[01:03:49] sitting there, you know, shaking hands. Um, it's just an incredible, incredible story, but also the, the tale of the capture itself. And I think that's really where so much of that story, um, you know, you can dive deeper into, but, uh, Lieutenant Albert Davis, who was, or Lieutenant junior grade Albert Davis, who was leading the party to get on the vessel, the first, uh, crew to

[01:04:17] get on the American crew, to get on the vessel, to stop the scuttling, to, to find the charges. Um, that story would be phenomenal to hear. So it's amazing. I mean, he himself was, uh, awarded the medal of honor for, for that day. Um, yeah. And you're right. As we said in the interview, if that, that, um, sea strainer cap wasn't within hands reach, it would be a totally different,

[01:04:43] totally different story. Yeah. Yeah. So many by the second decisions, any number of them could have completely altered that story and, and, and it would have never, never made it to Bermuda. It would certainly never made it to New Hampshire and it would not have made it to Chicago at any point along the way. So, um, it's amazing that it, it still exists out there and, you know, it serves as a really good reminder of not just what sailors in the German Navy went through, but, you know,

[01:05:13] sailors from every Navy, the hardships that they went through in world war II, world war one. And, um, to some extent today, um, it's just a good reminder of, of what people are willing to do for, for others. Uh, it's, uh, it really, it's a, and that's what at the museum, they, they have it as a tribute and, um, as a memorial to everyone who would serve doesn't really necessarily matter what country you serve for, but all the people that have served at in, in, in the navies across

[01:05:42] the world, uh, as this is a, you know, a memorial to you, uh, it really is quite special. Um, but after you were, I think it was leading up to the movie, Tyler, up to the hunt for an October, you brought up an interesting topic that you think Tom Clancy might've been influenced by, uh, the capture of five Oh five. Well, you know, rumor on the street is the U S had actually

[01:06:11] gotten their hands on a Russian sub at some point. It was always the rumor that the story was more true than more truth than fiction, but you know, you could pull any number of details from the, the submarine that we pulled up off of Hawaii with the Glomar Explorer or, or any of that, but researching the five Oh five story, so much of it kind of lines up, um, that it's, I don't think

[01:06:37] it's out of the realm of possibility that Clancy had looked a little bit into five Oh five when he was writing the script or writing the book. And while you, especially, I think quite notably you, there is a character that is in both the five Oh five story in the book. Is that correct? Yeah. Um, Admiral gallery, um, in the book plays a big role. Um, he's the chief of

[01:07:04] Naval operations in the North Atlantic or something like that. I'm not, I wasn't Navy, you know, these things, but anyway, head honcho, uh, you've read the book like a million times. So you should know that head honcho for the boats in the Atlantic. Um, and then in the, in the historical story of five Oh five, the captain of the small aircraft carrier Guadalcanal who ran this entire task group was Admiral Dan gallery. So, you know,

[01:07:32] it's again, that's, it could be a coincidence. He was pulling, you know, the names of Naval officers at this time kind of a thing, but again, it's, you know, one of those fun facts. And, and I think what everyone, what we always go back to Tyler is that there's no such thing as coincidences, right? Tom Clancy is, is widely known for and respected for the, the realism and the historical, um,

[01:07:58] accuracy of his novels. It just makes, it makes sense to me. Yeah. We could ask him, but much like Paul Newman, um, he's no longer with us. I've, I've written him a couple of emails that I got nothing back. That's unfortunately, if you do, that would be an incredible news story. That would be incredible. All right. Um, so in the news, a couple, a couple of news stories going on. Um, it is winter time. It is dangerous out there. We've had some, uh, some pretty bad weather over the past couple of, uh, a couple of weeks, early January was kind of crappy, really cold,

[01:08:28] really nasty, a bunch of wind storms. And there has been a couple, uh, offshore fishermen, uh, who've run into trouble. The weather has been rough and you know, this, this time of year, it kind of highlights the importance of the, the U S coast guard. Um, and they've been pretty active here in the last few weeks. Uh, January 17th, the 56 foot fishing vessel, Miss Sandy

[01:08:53] ran into some trouble about seven miles off of Gloucester. Um, they had something come loose below the waterline. They had five or six feet of water in the engine room. Um, and the U S coast guard responded from Gloucester with the cutter, William Chadwick, and they boarded the boat. They brought in pumps. They did their best, but, um, any efforts to, to save the boat failed and it

[01:09:19] sunk in about 160 feet of water. Um, on board, there was a captain and a Noah observer, which for that observer, that's a, that's a really rough day. Um, but they were taking off the boat safely. And then the boat sank in about four minutes after that. Um, there's a video that you can watch, um, and it goes stern first rolls and, and goes under completely pretty fast, which is,

[01:09:46] which is always shocking to watch those videos. It's incredible to see how fast a boat can sink. And, uh, you know, and that four minutes is really fast. And if you think about the time that they started, uh, troubleshooting, you know, doing a damage control, trying to pump water overboard, find where the ingress was coming from, um, to the point where they gave up and then four minutes from that, that's, I mean, that's a really short time. You can't get anything

[01:10:16] in that time. You know, I think the, the four minutes starts about the time they say, okay, it's done. And it starts, it starts going down certain first quickly, kind of from that point to gone in about four minutes. But I think, you know, in, at least in, in my offshore training, you know, with survival suits, you've got about 60 seconds is kind of the rule of thumb to get that survival suit on. Um, and

[01:10:44] it's, it goes fast. I can, I've, I've done it. It's 60 seconds is, is enough time, but you've got to, you've got to be moving to do it. And so by the time you get that on, you get, you know, outside the pilot house and on the deck, like that's your time's up. That four minutes is gone. So, um, obviously incredible work by the coast garden and, and the crew there. And then only a

[01:11:07] few days later, just 10 miles South of Block Island, the 55 foot trawler Maddie and Marine two collided with the 87 foot Scalloper vanquish. Um, kind of the, the details are, are thin on this one, but I kind of sound like the, the Scalloper might've been a larger steel vessel and, uh, it collided with the trawler, the smaller trawler without much damage. And it was able to continue on to new Bedford,

[01:11:37] but much like the miss Sandy, the trawler Maddie Marine, it hung on for a little while, but the coast guard board had attempted to pump it efforts for that. We're looking like they were failing. And so they removed the crew of four and took them back to the coast guard station. Um, in I think

[01:12:00] Montauk on Montauk. Yeah. Um, but the, the, the odd thing about this one is that they do not have, they have no witness of the fishing vessel actually sinking. Um, so they noted it as an adrift vessel. So we'll see if that washes up here in the next few weeks and, and find out a little bit more. It'll cut wash up on a Bailey's beach and all the members be pissed. Appreciate the fishermen.

[01:12:28] Appreciate the coast guard. It's a, it's a tough gig and it's just a hard reminder during the winter time when, you know, the conditions are worse and things like this happen. Yeah. It's I tell my kids all the time, hamburgers do not come from the hamburger tree. So yes, the scallops do have to be caught that it is pretty, it is, uh, it's really nuts. And, and again, the bravery of the coast guard, um, jumping on board a sinking ship try to try to

[01:12:56] save it. I don't know how quickly, uh, Maddie and Marin went down, but still, uh, to get on board, to try to save it still, it's still very, it's nerve wracking. It's really, it's really scary. Things compound when the weather gets rough. And I think about all the, the lobstermen that, you know, they're fishing 20, 30, 40 miles offshore this time of year. Way offshore. Yeah. It's, you know, next time you go and get a lobster at your, your favorite

[01:13:24] restaurant, um, try to, try to remember how that got there. It's, it took a little bit of effort. All right. Uh, our second news topic, um, off the coast of Southeast Asia and Vietnam area, uh, a new type of delicacy was discovered. Uh, and they've named it, uh, quite aptly. If you look at a picture of it, but they've named it the Vader bug. Um, it is, it's, it's called an isopod.

[01:13:51] And essentially it's a big time. I don't know what, what regionally they called it off in the Pacific Northwest. But when I was growing up in Phoenix, we had these things called potato bugs. Do you know what that is? It's a hundred percent. It's a potato bug. It's a potato bug. And it's essentially, imagine an armadillo with no snout and no tail. And it's just kind of flat. And that's what this Vader bug looks like. It's called an isopod. It's got an

[01:14:16] exoskeleton. It's got seven pairs of legs under it. So it's, it's got a, like a hard shell up to protect it like a turtle, but it's frigging massive. It's like a foot long and it's just, it's so odd. And it's, I don't know how hungry the person was that tried it for the first time. If you crossed, uh, like a horseshoe crab and an armadillo. Yeah, that's a perfect, yeah, that's a perfect description.

[01:14:43] Bleached white. It looks like, I wouldn't, maybe not Darth Vader, but maybe like a storm trooper. Yeah. Like black eyes, white exoskeleton. It's, it's a creepy looking thing. It is really creepy. Yeah. It, it, it, it was pretty popular on the news there for a few days. I mean, CNN, Jake Tapper did a whole thing on it. And, uh, I think you and I both found the same

[01:15:09] video online of making fried rice out of it. And it's, it's not the most enticing looking creature. Yeah. They, they likened it to lobster. The taste of it is a lot like lobster. And, um, I mean, so this, this, this thing sold for, um, 2 million Vietnamese dong, which you got to think, oh my God, that's so much, but it's really only 80. It's, it's $80, which is still, you know, pretty amazing.

[01:15:39] Think of like a slab of Kobe beef, um, that like at the highest point, this, something like this was selling for about 80 bucks. It's really come back down to earth as not only sell selling for like 40 bucks, but yeah, it just, there's, that's the kind of thing. If I've been to Southeast Asia, where all my, um, on my cruise and I've stuck to all kinds of the, I got like pad Thai and I got

[01:16:06] curries that I knew everything about. If I was going to go back again, uh, with a little bit of financial stability, I would hire someone to like go to a restaurant and say, I don't know what it is, but just if it tastes good, I would like, and I probably would eat it. But if they brought that thing out to me and said, this is what you're going to have, like, you know, like the lobster tank, like I want that lobster. And I had to pick my isopot. No way in Hades.

[01:16:32] Well, I think in the dark you ate it. I could, I could see how it would be very much like lobster. I mean, they eat the same things. They, they survive the same way. They're, they're bottom dwelling, harvesting dead animals or dead fish and whales at the bottom of the ocean. So their diet's the same. I'm sure they probably taste the same, but they're similar. It's just not a, an enticing

[01:16:58] looking thing. What it looks like is it looks like the aliens from independence day. Like when it comes, when it comes up out of the spaceship and Will Smith slaps them like he did Chris rock. It looks exactly like that. It's less like Chris. Oh, that's, that's good. That's a good one. Um, I have to, I've got to remind myself what the aliens at independence days look like,

[01:17:24] but side. Yeah. But scientists are worried because the, the isopods, the, these isopods or the, the Vader bug reproduces very slowly that, you know, if it's a delicacy, we're going to, we are going to go down there and get every single one of them and, and kill off this, uh, kill off this species really quick. So that that's what they're worried about. So Tyler do your part. Do not eat a Vader bug.

[01:17:51] Yeah. I mean, I think if they just take a look at the photos of it, I just don't think that we're going to, I don't think we're going to take them all out that fast. Well, they're not very fast so we can catch up to them. Yeah. I'll pass. I'll pass. All right, Tyler, I'm going to spring a new story. I've never been more nervous than I am right now. This is, this has got danger written all over it.

[01:18:16] No, it doesn't have danger written all over it. I knew you wouldn't approve this news item. If we talked about it beforehand, it's not an update on Charlotte, the stingray, but we've got, uh, we've got another immaculate conception. There is a baby shark in Shrevesport, Louisiana in an aquarium in Shreveport, Louisiana. There were two female sharks in this tank and there has been no male sharks in

[01:18:44] this tank for over three years. And there was just a baby born last couple of weeks ago. My, my initial reaction is a disappointment. It's not anger. It's disappointment. Oh, thank you. Because it's this topic or because of what other reasons? Oh no, just this topic.

[01:19:07] I know you, you hate Charlotte so much that first, first you go on a cruise and now you bring up yet another aquarium mystery. I just, I don't know. I don't know what to do with this. I mean, if, if I remember correctly, I've tried to black out most of it, but if I remember correctly, sharks were some of the species that had been known to do this previously.

[01:19:35] It has been documented in sharks. It wasn't so much a shock. I think the, the shock was that they said that the shark caused the stingray to get pregnant. And that was, that was the initial good. That was Jerry. That was the initial issue. All right. All right, Carter. So tell me about this new fish. Well, I've kind of, it's, you, you know, the story, we went over the story with Charlotte.

[01:20:03] They think it's, there's two things that have could happen. It's either it's a delayed fertilization and you could say, Hey man, it's three years. That's really long, but it has been documented that they're the longest delayed fertilization on record for shark is 45 months. And so that's well within, I mean, she would have to have another full year of no contact with the male shark to get to that

[01:20:28] point. But it's been a while, three or four years. I can't blame her. I can't blame her. And then the other one, of course, is pathogenesis, which we went into way deeper than I ever care to ever again with Charlotte. But it's essentially as this article I read about, it was, it's the last

[01:20:48] ditch effort for this shark to pass on its, um, its DNA and it created this, it fertilized this egg itself and born it into a new shark. So we'll have to check in with, um, our, uh, our buddy fast Freddie. He's pretty knowledgeable on this kind of stuff. Maybe he'll have some answers for us. Yeah. And, and I almost there, uh, there are two important points. The first one is the baby shark

[01:21:16] does have a name. It is called baby shark Yoko and symbolically, symbolically Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles. Maybe baby shark Yoko is going to break up around the buoy because I'm not going to, I'm going to refuse to not do this. We are having updates every single episode on baby Yoko. I tell you what, I really enjoy, I really enjoy my time here at around the buoy. It's, it's fun. It's a challenge.

[01:21:44] It's, it gives me the opportunity to talk to people that in, in no other point in my life, would I be able to talk to Sir Robin Knox Johnson about sailing around the world and no around the world would I ever been able to do that if it wasn't for this podcast, but I, if it wasn't for baby shark Yoko, if the next time we record you're done. All right. Well, we all have to have our limits.

[01:22:09] And so, um, but they, the aquarium has said, they are going to be doing some genetic testing on this baby shark Yoko, um, to find out truly, first of all, which mom is because they don't know which mom it was. Um, and then again, so there's always a Jerry Springer aspect to all of these stories. And I, Tyler, I, I also would be remiss if I didn't say that this story comes to us. Thanks

[01:22:35] to the around the buoy fan club president, my sister-in-law, Meg Farrell. Uh, she, she, uh, like just shot me a text out of the blue this morning and said, uh, why haven't we talked about this? And I was like, Meg, you are a lucky woman because we are recording tonight and we are definitely going to talk about it. I'm starting to get concerned about Meg. At first it was the smash

[01:23:00] mouth thing. And now it's this, I just, these are red flags. I'm not sure what for, but they're red flags. Well, I think that about wraps it up for this one. As always, thank you to our listeners for the support of the show and listening to stories about these silly aquariums. It's tough, but I really appreciate it. Thank you. We really, really do appreciate it. I'm so thankful for you,

[01:23:25] Tyler. I really am. Please subscribe to around the buoy on iTunes and Spotify. It's free and who doesn't love free stuff? Also, if you like what you hear, please rate the show and leave us a review for extra content on our episodes. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook by searching around the buoy in either one of those sites. And of course, don't forget to look up Tyler Fields Photography and East Passage Boatwrights on the Instawebs as well. They are both great follows,

[01:23:54] Mr. Dooley. That's it for episode 92 for Tyler Fields. I'm Carter Richardson, and this is Around the Buick.