Daniel V. Gallery

Daniel Vincent Gallery (July 10, 1901 – January 16, 1977) was a rear admiral in the United States Navy. He saw extensive action during World War II, fighting U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic, where his most notable achievement was the June 4, 1944 capture of the German submarine U-505. After the war, Gallery was a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. During the post-war military cutbacks, he wrote a series of articles criticizing the heavy reductions being made to the US Navy. These articles placed him at odds with the administration during the episode which became known as the Revolt of the Admirals.

Daniel was the son of Daniel Vincent Gallery (born Chicago, July 19, 1865), lawyer, and Mary Onahan Gallery, writer. In 1917, at the age of 16, Gallery 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.

He had three younger brothers, all of whom had careers in the U.S. Navy. Two brothers, William O. Gallery and Philip D. Gallery, also rose to the rank of rear admiral. The fourth brother, John Ireland Gallery, was a Catholic priest and Navy chaplain. Their grandfather Daniel, born about 1839, emigrated to the U.S. from Ennistymon, County Clare, Ireland, in the mid- to late- 1800s.

Gallery was an early naval aviator. He flew seaplanes, torpedo bombers and amphibians. In the late 1930s, he won at the National Air Races in a race-tuned Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo plane. 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 Supermarine Spitfires from the factory to Royal Air Force 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.^{[citation needed]}

In 1943, Gallery was named captain of the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal, which he commissioned. In January 1944, he commanded antisubmarine Task Group 21.12 (TG 21.12) out of Norfolk, Virginia, with Guadalcanal as the flagship. TG 21.12 sank the German submarine U-544.

In March 1944, Task Group 22.3 was formed with Guadalcanal as the flagship. On this cruise, 24-hour flight operations from escort carriers hunted U-boats, which had begun remaining submerged during daylight to avoid carrier-based aircraft. On April 9, the task group sank U-515, commanded by U-boat ace Kapitänleutnant Werner Henke. After prolonged depth charging, the submarine was forced to the surface among the attacking ships and the surviving crew abandoned ship. The deserted U-515 was hammered by rockets and gunfire before she finally sank. The next night, aircraft from the task group caught U-68 on the surface, in broad moonlight, and sank her with one survivor, a lookout caught on-deck when the U-boat crash dived.

On the next cruise of TG 22.3, Gallery took the unusual step of forming boarding parties, in case of another chance to capture a U-boat arose. On June 4, 1944, the task group crossed paths with U-505 off the coast of Africa. U-505 was spotted running on the surface by two Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters from Guadalcanal. Her captain, Oberleutnant Harald Lange, dived the boat to avoid the fighters. But they could see the submerged submarine and vectored destroyers onto her track. The experienced antisubmarine warfare team laid down patterns of depth charges that shook U-505 up badly, popping relief valves and breaking gaskets, resulting in water sprays in her engine room. The captain ordered the crew to abandon ship, during which scuttling measures were not completed.