Captain Erich Topp steers his Type VIIc U-Boat number U-552 Red Devil towards the sanctuary of the base at St Nazaire after another patrol during the grueling Battle of the Atlantic in 1942.
In the skies above, heading back out to hostile waters is a giant Focke Wulf 200 Condor from III/KG40 and three Ju88Ds from KGr 106 whose missions will be to search for vulnerable Allied shipping for the submarine Wolfpacks to attack.
The third-highest scoring U-Boat ace, Captain Erich Topp sank a total of thirty ships and damaged three more whilst commanding the Red Devil.
Our vacation last month included the Air Force Museum, and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.
Within the space of a few days we saw a JU88, and walked through a German U-boat. Not sure if the U-505 is exactly the same class as the U-552. No Condors though.
John- I’d love to visit that museum, except… Chicago… sigh
Agree.
We were headed up from the Air Force Museum to Sleeping Bear Dunes, we stayed outside of Chicago and parked in the garage under the Museum of Science and Industry. We were in relatively secure and reasonable (by Chicago standards) priced parking. At the end of the day in the Museum, we headed for Sleeping Bear.
And we (me) figured out the time zone change wrong and arrived much later than I thought we would. I bet a Naval Air guy would not have made that mistake.
We did the online registration for the U-505 tour, and the exhibit was well worth the visit.
I recall reading in one of the warbird mags about an Air Corps unit during WWII whose job was to grab German aircraft at airfields as soon as they were captured, keep an eye out for the latest high tech stuff. The unit’s usual transport was a C-47. One day from the air, they spotted a Condor sitting on the ground at an airfield. One of the guys looking down made an off-hand remark like “Gosh, I wish we had one of those.”. One thing lead to another, and presto-chango, they traveled around in that Condor from then on, eventually flying it back to the U.S.
A bit more on the whole presto-chango thing. The retreating Germans knew what was going to happen to their abandoned aircraft, so they booby trapped everything they could. Things could get “interesting”, like and FW-190 up on jack stands undergoing (remote) landing gear tests. Boom! And there is most of the right wing now on the ramp. As one might imagine, before these guys took off in their Condor, they went through it with a very fine tooth comb.
As I said, they eventually flew the Condor back to the U.S. Story is that once at their final destination (Wright Patterson?) who ever was supposed to check them in took one look at all the contraband they had on board, threw their clip board in the air, and just walked away. Anyway, in time just about anyone interested got a chance to fly, inspect, test, whatever this lone Condor. Eventually it was decided that it had no further use and was scrapped. Only then did they discover the last booby trap in one of the wings. It had not gone off because the detonator had failed.
RHT- Yep, I heard that story from an AFOSR engineer at Wright Pat… Scary!
Great art and history lesson