It has been more than 50 years since the aircraft carrier USS Guadalcanal’s hunter-killer group captured the German submarine U-505 off Cape Blanco in French West Africa, but for former crewman Hans Goebeler the memories are as fresh as ever. The 74-year-old retiree still bristles at any suggestion that U-505, the first ship captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812, was an unlucky ship.

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‘There’s no reason to say that the U-505 was a hard-luck ship,’ says Goebeler. ‘No matter what happened to her, she always brought us back. She wouldn’t even let anything happen to the Americans who boarded her. Those other so-called lucky ships, well, you might have shaved with them yesterday because they are all scrap now. But U-505 is on display in Chicago [at the Museum of Science and Industry] as a monument to the boys on both sides who died in the war. I think our boat was the luckiest ship in World War II.’ Goebeler should know; more that 50 years ago, in the warm ocean waters off the West African coast, it was he who ‘pulled the plug’ to scuttle U-505 — the U-boat that wouldn’t die.

Goebeler was born in 1923 in the small Hessian farming community of Frankenburg, about 75 miles northeast of Frankfurt. His father was an official in the German Reichsbahn railway system and raised his son with a firm belief in the value of hard work, self-reliance and patriotism. ‘My father was a soldier in the First World War,’ Goebeler says. ‘He fought in the East but was captured by the Russians. He saw horrible, unspeakable things done by the Bolsheviks during the revolution. They did these things to their own people in the name of communism! I swore I would work to make Germany strong and to never let the Communists take over my country.’

Even as a youngster, Goebeler displayed the kind of abilities that the German navy required for its elite U-boat arm. He joined the Deutsches Jungvolk, the branch of the Hitler Youth organization for boys between the ages of 8 and 14. Exhibiting a precocious intelligence and charisma that still shines today, he quickly rose in rank to become the youngest DJ leader in the country. On rare occasions, Goebeler can be coaxed into showing his special Hitler Youth Leader identity booklet and an accompanying photograph showing him in uniform, surrounded by his much older and taller unit members.

Goebeler was 15 years old when Europe was plunged into World War II, and he immediately attempted to volunteer for the Germany navy. Rejected by the navy because of his youth and a mistaken diagnosis of colorblindness, he turned his energies toward schoolwork. Goebeler excelled in his studies, showing a special aptitude for mechanical engineering. By the time he was 17, he had earned a driver’s license and completed the four-year apprenticeship for master motor mechanic in half the usual time. Ten days after he received his master’s certificate, however, he was finally accepted by the German navy.

Although Goebeler and his fellow recruits did not realize it at the time, they were being very carefully watched and evaluated during basic training. To his immense pride and satisfaction, Goebeler learned that he had been chosen for service in the navy’s elite submarine corps. ‘At first our training was mostly infantry combat related,’ he remembers. ‘Later, we got transferred to submarine school and had to learn every valve and line in a submarine. I was already trained as a motor mechanic, but the navy made me take submarine electrician classes. That way, they got two for the price of one; I could work on either the diesel engines or the electric motors on a U-boat.’

Early in the war, new crewmen were usually sent from submarine school to the shipyards to watch the final construction of the submarines in which they would serve, in order to better familiarize themselves with the technical details. Goebeler’s mastery of the material, however, allowed him to be posted directly to an operational unit, the 2nd U-boat Flotilla, stationed in Lorient on France’s Atlantic coast.

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