Gallery, Daniel Vincent, born 10-07-1901 in Chicago, Illinois, entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. He graduated a year early, in 1920, and competed in the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp on the U.S. wrestling team. In 1941, while the U.S. was still neutral, he was assigned as the Naval Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Great Britain. While in Britain, he earned his flight pay by ferrying Spitfires from the factory to RAF aerodromes. He liked to claim that he was the only U.S. Navy aviator who flew Spitfires during the Battle of Britain,
but they were unarmed. In 1942, Gallery took command of the Fleet Air Base in Reykjavík, Iceland where he was awarded the Bronze Star for action against German submarines. It was there that he first conceived his plan to capture a U-boat. In 1943 Captain Gallery was appointed commander of the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal. On April 9, the task group sank U-515
, commanded by the top U-boat ace Kapitänleutnant Werner Henke. On 04-06-1944 the task grop crossed paths with U-505 and hit the U boat deadly. Keeping the U-boat from sinking immediately, the boarders retrieved the sub’s Enigma coding machine and current code books. This was a primary goal of the mission because it would enable the code breakers in Tenth Fleet to read German signals in clear, without having to break the codes first. Captain Gallery received the Distinguished Service Medal for capturing U-505. He also received a blistering dressing-down from Admiral Ernst Joseph King



Death and burial ground of Gallery, Daniel Vincent.




