[ Music ]
>> There are over 17,500 museums within the United States,
welcoming over 850 million visitors each year.
Did you ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes in museums,
creating the displays and exhibits we all enjoy?
Join us as we explore museums and their exhibits from the inside out.
[ Music ]
>> Hi, I'm Leslie Mueller.
Welcome to Museum Access, a show that takes you behind the scenes
at America's top museums.
Today we're at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.
It's the largest science museum in the Western Hemisphere,
home to over 350,000 artifacts and over 400,000 square feet
of exhibits that spark scientific curiosity and creativity.
During World War II, Chicago born naval captain Daniel Gallery
and his task group captured a German U-boat, the U-505.
It unlocked German technology, curbing the annihilation
of more allied ships.
The 700-ton U-boat now resides in this museum.
Today, director of collections, Kathleen McCarthy, is going
to take us on a private tour of this incredible U-boat.
We'll get to go inside spaces that are normally off limits
to museum guests, and we'll also see rarely exhibited artifacts
from the museum's archives.
So now let's see if I can find Kathleen
in this ginormous museum.
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Kathleen, I want to thank you so much for joining us today.
This is so exciting to be at your museum.
>> Well, I think this is very nice to meet you,
and we're glad to have you here.
>> Oh, thank you.
Now tell me a little bit about-- I know we're in the science area.
>> Yeah, all museum science, right?
But what is this behind us?
>> This is one of our newer permanent exhibits called Science Storm.
It explores science through natural phenomenon.
So all these sort of natural phenomenon that you see in the world,
you go, "Huh, how many of you guys found curious?"
And a lot of scientists get that start.
But when they're kids, they go, "I wonder how that works?"
So here you can learn about chemistry and physics
with hundreds of hands-on activities in there,
and lots of artifacts.
And you can explore that same kind of curiosity
that the scientists had when they said, "What makes that work?"
>> Now I know across the hall, I saw a locomotive train
and airplanes and tell me about that area.
>> Yeah, we have some really wonderful transportation artifacts.
Like the giant locomotive, the 999, was the first locomotive
to break the 100-mile-an-hour speed limit.
>> Really? >> Yeah.
>> Whenever that technology's introduced,
people are nervous about it.
So people thought humans can't go that fast.
What will happen to our bodies?
>> Our bodies cloud, yeah, yeah.
>> Besides the 999 locomotive, there's a model railroad
that there's at any given time around 30 trains running.
So you have commuter trains in the Chicago end
of the great train story, and then you see trains going
across the country all the way to Seattle.
And then above the model railroad is a 727 airplane, a real one.
>> That's the United? >> Yeah, the United plane.
And so you can go in and some of the floors have been replaced
with plexiglass, so you can sort of see down in them.
>> You have to tell me about the coal mine.
I know I took the ride when I was a child,
and I know it's very popular, but how did that get started?
It's been here forever, hasn't it?
>> Yeah, the coal mine was one of the exhibits
that the museum first opened with.
When it opened in 1933, it was about the only thing here
at the time, and they worked closely with miners
from southern Illinois to, they went into mines,
they cast the walls of the mine to create the walls
of the coal mine here.
>> It's so realistic.
>> Yeah. Well, and I remember as a child coming in
and seeing the dollhouse, I think it's been renamed,
it was Colleen Morris dollhouse where back when,
and now it's the ferry, what is it now?
>> It's been renamed the ferry castle.
>> The ferry castle.
>> And we did that with Colleen Morris.
So she lived, you know, after her years in Hollywood,
she moved to Chicago.
She was very active in the museum for many years,
and she would come and care for it.
And it was with her involvement that we switched the name,
'cause it did a little more of the story
that she was trying to tell about who lived in the castle.
>> It's so magical.
>> Yeah, and there's one more exhibit I want to tell you about.
It's called Numbers in Nature.
When we look all around us, there are patterns in nature,
and these patterns can be extrapolated,
and they're often used in design and architecture.
And these same patterns exist in our bodies.
They exist in the trees you see and dry riverbeds.
And the centerpiece of this exhibit is a mirror maze.
'Cause a mirror maze is also a repeating pattern
of triangles, so yes can go--
>> You physically go through these days.
And 1,800 square foot mirror maze.
>> There is so much at this museum.
You could spend days and not see all of it,
and I don't care if you're eight years old or 80 years old.
There's something here for everyone.
And I know you have a big treat for us, the U-505.
>> So Kathleen, here we are with the U-505 behind us.
Tell me how in the world did it ever end up in Chicago?
>> Well, it's a very interesting story
about how it ended up in Chicago.
It was captured during World War II
by Captain Dan Gallery, who happened to be a Chicago native.
By treaty, captured goods during a war
need to be destroyed two years after the conflict ends.
And so it was getting close to the time
that the U-505 was set to be destroyed.
So just out of a courtesy,
he decided on his own to contact Captain Gallery.
And just to let him know what had happened to the U-505.
And that started a whole process going
where Captain Dan Gallery's brother
knew the president of the museum.
So they had a conversation.
And a few years later, 1954, here it is.
>> What happened?
I mean, this was off of West Africa, correct?
>> So Dan Gallery had also successfully had sunk a submarine.
But he really understood that there was valuable information
that could be, if you could capture a submarine,
you could really help turn the tide of the war.
So he just said about, they were the can-do group.
Like they were determined.
So they trained and they just made it their mission
and they successfully did it.
When they captured the U-505,
they had found hundreds and hundreds of pounds of documents
that they were able to take off the enigma,
the coding machine that encrypted the messages
the Germans were doing.
So it was a really an important capture.
They would really help turn the tide of the war.
If things had gone as they should have gone
from the German point of view, they would have sunk this up.
So they are trained to, if they need to abandon a submarine,
they know they can't let it get in the enemy's hands.
So they booby trap it.
The sea strainer is essentially a plug
that keeps the water from coming into the U-boat.
So they managed to pull that off so the water started pouring in.
But they never did set booby traps.
And that's what the Americans that were boarding
didn't know that, did they?
So they're going in not knowing whether they were ever
going to come out.
Wow.
They're really brave.
They're very young men, just really brave.
So they went down not knowing what they were facing.
And so the party scattered, they were looking for booby traps.
And very quickly, someone found the sea strainer
and saw the water pouring in.
And they looked at it for a second knowing
that they could lift it up and just blow the whole thing up.
So they felt around for wires.
They didn't feel any.
And you just have to take a leap of faith.
And they picked it up.
It wasn't booby trap.
Put it down, screwed it in place.
And that started the whole process of then getting it towed to safety.
Oh, it couldn't go on its own power.
So it got towed.
What a journey this up has made.
Well, I am dying to go down there and get inside this sub.
So can we take a look?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, nothing beats the experience
of being in the kind of quarters that these gentlemen--
You are not kidding me.
Do I need to take a motion sickness pill or anything?
No.
That's not going to move.
OK, great.
Let's go.
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I was lucky enough to run into a young naval officer,
Chief Justin Jenkins, who happened
to be visiting the U-505 exhibit.
So I stalked him for a while and finally caught up with him.
So tell me, what does an exhibit like this mean to you
as a member of today's navy?
It's very special.
There's a lot of museums out there,
and some of them have really captured great pieces
of the navy history.
Being a member of today's navy, I think exhibits like this
are so important, because they really remind us
the most important thing, which is where we come from.
Kathleen, this is incredible.
It even sounds like you're in a submarine.
Is that intentional?
Yes.
So when guests come on to experience the U-505,
what they end up experiencing is the day it was captured.
So as you're on here, you hear a little bit
of the sound of what sailors would have heard.
It's relatively quiet.
It is relatively quiet.
And that was actually an important thing about a submarine.
You needed to be able to be quiet,
because some of our technology was the US was listening.
The Allies were listening for submarines.
The Germans were listening for a ship, as well.
So even I want to point out, so here are the beds.
So this bed, as tiny as it may seem,
it's got some personal quarters here.
We did a lot of research to make it very real.
So this is the same pattern in the same kind of material.
But you were kind of lucky if you got to sleep here,
because you could have slept in the torpedo room.
The what?
Which we'll look at in a second.
If you see the curtains here, so people
were sleeping while the activity was going on.
So they had really dark curtains to block out the light.
Sure.
But also, you wouldn't want metal on metal,
because that would have made noise.
So there are--
It's all quiet.
It's all quiet.
So it's a string that they used to close that.
But if you were less lucky--
Yeah, you lucked out if you got these.
You slept in actually the torpedo room.
So there are two torpedo rooms on the boat.
We're going to go in the one at the end.
Then they're similar.
They're not exactly identical.
When they needed to get out of torpedo,
you had to roll up your bed.
So there was normally one to the right here.
And then are you climbing on the torpedo to get into bed?
Yeah.
And they weren't that sensitive, you could.
Right.
Yeah.
When we opened this new exhibit for the original German crew
were still alive, and two came for the opening.
And one of the Germans--
Oh, wow.
His bed was that very front one on the right side.
Oh, he pulls the shorts down.
So were they loading these torpedoes
into those circular tubes in the back?
Right.
But how are they loading them?
They must weigh a ton.
They do weigh a ton.
So there's this--
Oh, I see the whole structure of eye beams
that they use to pick up the torpedoes and load them
and then ascend them out.
So here they could shoot four torpedoes.
The rear torpedo room, they could shoot two.
So we'll take a look at that.
There are two bathrooms on the boat,
and you said there was like--
For how many guys are on the boat, by the way?
59.
59 and two bathrooms.
Two bathrooms.
And I'm going to stop complaining.
Yeah.
And this front room would have been filled with all the food,
and including the bathroom.
There's not much extra space.
Oh, lovely.
So for the first part of the trip,
there really was only one bathroom available.
Yeah, because the other's food storage.
Right.
Yeah.
Yummy.
So it's awesome.
So we--
Yeah, life on a sub.
So, Kathleen, what are we looking at here under this grate?
These are the electric batteries.
So the submarine, when it was under, when it was submerged,
it couldn't use its diesel engine.
So it ran on battery power.
Is it because of the sound?
It's a diesel.
Yeah, yeah.
And you might hear that with contemporary electric cars.
Yeah, they're so quiet.
It's so quiet.
So that's why they had a whole--
this whole area is all electric batteries.
You can see there's this little car that slides back and forth.
So somebody had--
it's a little bit like the batteries in your car
where you check the fluid levels in it.
So somebody had to get down there on a regular basis
and maintain the batteries.
Wow.
I hope it wasn't the guy that had that crummy bunk.
Oh, no.
He threw the-- he would have drawn this.
Short, strong.
A couple times on this sub.
Wow.
So this looks like a kitchen, kind of.
Is that what this is?
This is the kitchen.
And so this kitchen cooked for 59 people, Warren.
Boy, oh boy.
It was a very busy, active place.
And there is a way from the kitchen.
If the cook needed to escape, there's
hatches all throughout.
They can get on to the deck directly from the kitchen.
But also, there's a limited amount of fresh water.
So I mean, men didn't take showers very often.
So imagine the smell.
All the fresh water was reserved for cooking.
Oh, sure.
And the cook was the only one that
was allowed to clean himself using fresh water,
because certainly if he--
Oh, made him popular.
Yeah.
But he kept everybody else from getting sick.
Yeah, that's true.
So here is the sink, was covered over.
They're very efficient use of space here.
Wow, that's a lot of dishes for such a small sink.
Yeah.
So these were really the communication
centers of the submarine.
Here they would be listening, like I said, to sounds
and trying to find other ships, track them.
And then here is the room where they
did all the communication and encryption sending out codes.
But you can also see-- I mean, it's really
tried to make life on board pleasant.
There is a--
Record craft, I see.
And so there was about 80 records.
And I'm hearing German voices, is this all?
Yeah, so this is in this sort of a sense of what
it would have been like during the day.
And then here you have--
this was the captain's box.
So he actually has a sort of somewhat of a private space
with his own little desk and area.
And right here, the communications, which makes sense.
Yeah.
They're the heart of the sub.
So did I read somewhere that he was six foot one or something?
And all of these are five feet long?
Right.
Oh.
Sweet dreams.
Yeah, I don't think anybody rusted very well on this.
No, I'm sure.
And look at these hatch door.
Oh, my ***.
So this is the sort that's--
like in the center of the boat, and this
was the navigation center.
So from here, they steered the boats.
We have-- these are reproduction seats,
but we have these original seats that
look a lot like bicycles.
And--
Wait, there's--
Oh, there's some.
Wow.
And so there's the conning tower that you see on top.
This is the area to the conning tower.
And the boat could also be steered from the conning tower,
if need be.
But also, you can see how straight these ladders are.
If you were on deck and you needed to get down here quickly,
you needed to be-- we would normally think of a ladder
as leaned a little bit to make it easy to climb.
You wanted to be able to get down quick.
You're hopping almost.
Yeah.
So you could jump if you needed to to get down here.
If you recall, we're really close to the conning tower,
which the Germans used to escape.
And the last thing they did before they headed up
was remove this cover from the sea strainer.
So this is the cover that went on to this.
And so water was pouring in.
And so they found this here, and they quickly
felt around to make sure they're--
It wasn't booby trapped.
Booby trapped.
And then lifted it up, put it in place,
and then you put these on and ***** it down.
Now, this sea strain cover is a replica.
Since it's such an important part of the story,
we actually have the original out on display
where the boarding party is, to tell that story about how
brave they were to come in and just grab this.
I mean, you don't know.
You don't know if you're about to blow yourself up
by picking it up, unfortunately.
And it's hard to believe that a 700 ton sub could be sunk
from just that one with the water pouring in.
The area with the water pouring in, that's incredible.
They came into a very dismal situation
that they had to sort of feel their ways around.
They understood a little bit about the makeup of the submarine,
so they had a little sense of what they were getting into.
But we recently found a naval lantern on the boat.
There's so many--
No crannies, I've done it.
They didn't even know it was there?
We didn't even know it was there.
It's been there since 1944.
Yeah, so incredible.
So they had to bring their own lanterns.
And they were getting the electricity
going figured in getting it towed,
because they had to get water out of it.
So they managed-- they were very clever,
and they figured out a way to get the motor running
so they could charge up the electrical system
to pump out the water and then get it towed.
Gee, the capture was only the beginning of the--
Yeah, yeah.
--of the fun.
Yeah, right.
Let's go behind me here and let's see what's down this hallway.
More.
Wow.
So this is the diesel engine room.
So when the sub was on the surface,
it would use the diesel motors.
And you can still-- after it's been here 70 years,
you can still smell the diesel.
I do smell it.
I do smell it.
I do smell it.
We'll ever, ever go away.
Wow.
So they had these big banks.
So between the diesel motors and the electric motors,
that's how this operated.
And so we can walk through.
You can see there's another escape hatch here,
where you can get out to the deck.
So scattered throughout the subway, there are some--
Oh, right under here.
Oh, here.
This?
You can look underneath and you can get--
What, how do they get out of here?
Does a ladder drop down or something?
I think they must have--
Oh, my ***.
It's super very helpful, I'm sure.
Yeah, but there is a lot of ways up and out to the surface.
I've decided after going this far on the sub
that you have to be like half acrobatic to be on these.
And there's one piece that we restored here when we cut it.
So each captain would have put their own personal symbol
in the boat.
And so this was the symbol for the captain
that was on the boat when it was captured.
So now we can go into the rear torpedo room.
I know this is our behind the scenes peak,
but not everybody gets to see.
So we're looking forward to this.
So you can see these hatches.
They had lots of levers to keep them tight when--
Kathleen, I'm going to leave it to the water.
So I'll brace you on the face here.
Here we have-- so here you can see the lathe.
So this area, this area is also the workshop.
So you could turn--
Yeah, I didn't say all these stuff.
So when we got the U-505, the original lathe was missing.
And we hadn't been able to find a German lathe to replace it.
So this actually is an American lathe,
but it's from the same period.
And so it's of the same size and shape.
Probably don't look that large different.
Yeah, similar function.
So they were able to, within reason,
remake something that would break so that they could stay out
and see it, as long as they could.
So now we get a really close-up view of what this torpedo had
to look like.
Wow, the tube, so--
Oh, my gosh.
You can see it all the way outside.
Yeah.
Oh, that is so cool.
Yeah, so that they have--
Wow.
--which are ahead.
But you can see that what they would use
to pick up the torpedo, put it in there.
But then how do they get it to go out?
So they would close--
They would close the door.
Yeah.
And I don't know that it moves right now, but--
Yeah, anyway, they shot it.
Yeah, and there was a lot of air pressure to send them out.
They had to keep the tubes greased,
so there wasn't any smoothness.
Sure.
So it was a very sophisticated process.
And really, when you think of it, 1944, wow.
And as I mentioned, you can steer from in the conic tower.
You could also shoot the torpedoes from in the conic tower.
I see.
So they really wanted to make sure that no matter what
the situation was, for any reason,
they could still do what they needed to do.
Do what they needed to do.
That makes sense.
Now, I know we're at the tail end of the sub.
I understand you have a few very rarely seen artifacts
from the archives that you're going to show us.
Could we go out and look at that?
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, thanks, Kathleen.
This is incredible.
So, Kathleen, this table looks like it's
filled with wonderful artifacts from the U-505.
Tell me what we're looking at here.
We're going to look at a combination of U-505 artifacts.
And actually, some from the American sailors
that were part of the capture.
So here we have something that's really special.
And it was more or less a scrapbook of the U-505.
It recorded its commissionings from the start of it.
And then just the day-to-day activities on the boat,
the comings and goings.
Would this just be an individual who would have been keeping
this, or would have been somebody in the communications
area, or--
Well, with this, I'm not quite sure who actually
kept the journal on this.
They had more official logs.
They were definitely kept.
But this seems to be a much more personal sort of scrapbook.
So you can see just in a variety of hand writing.
So I think it was just sort of a collaborative effort.
And Captain Dan Gallery, who captured the submarine,
writes about this artifact in his book.
Wow.
So you can just sort of see--
Yeah, and there's some more little photographs.
So it's an amazing sort of story.
What a piece of history.
See sort of behind the scenes into the personality,
the humanity of the sailors that were
fighting on the other side of the war.
So also from the U-505.
These are the wing nuts that were part of the sea strainer.
And that's a very special story about the capture.
And that was where the water was pouring in.
The boat was sinking.
And on the boat, we have the replicas
of the nuts that held the sea strainer in place.
So that's where that top was over to the side
that we were looking at.
OK.
Right.
So they're huge.
Because you imagine the pressure of that water pouring in.
So when they put the top on, they really
wanted to ***** it down hard to keep that.
But so the sea strainer, the ability of them
to find that really quickly, right after they
jumped down the fact that it wasn't a movie.
Yeah.
Booby trapped.
And they managed to get it on and secure,
stop the water from pouring in, is what really is the most
important reason why this is here today.
Because otherwise, they really did
try to sink it before they left.
So then the other artifacts here are from the American sailors
that eventually donated them to the museum.
So these are signal paddle flags.
So these would have been used to guide the airplanes landing
on the boat, on the carriers.
And the gentleman that donated these to the museum
is in some of the film that you see in the exhibit using these.
Oh my ***.
Yeah.
So it makes them really special.
So certainly, today's method of communication
would be different.
But back back in 1940s, the state of the art.
The state of the art, and very effective.
Here we have the dress blue jumper of one of the boarding
party.
The boarding party were the nine sailors
that were the first people on board
after the submarine was being abandoned by the Germans.
The bravest.
The bravest, yeah.
And so the sailors have had a good relationship
with the museum over the years and have donated
artifacts for the museum.
And this gives us kind of the context.
So he certainly wouldn't have been wearing this when
he captured the boat.
And you can see him in the picture.
He's the center of the picture for the boarding party.
Yeah, he sure sleeps, right.
But it helps us tell a broader story
of what the sailor's life was like.
And bring that sort of personal human story
to this very important moment in our history.
So here you see what he would have been wearing
at a much colder season, not when
he was in the tropics hunting you boats.
But the families have been very generous with their stories
and as well their artifacts over the years.
And what was the officer's name?
It was Sailor Gordon.
Sailor Gordon, huh?
OK.
And has he been to the museum?
So we had 70th anniversary of the capture.
And we had a big celebration.
And he's the last remaining living member of the boarding
party.
And he actually came to the museum for that event.
Wow.
Wonderful.
So we were able to get out some of his artifacts
and show him and his family.
And so we get very happy and excited
when the sailors visit the museum.
It's beautiful.
And thank you so much for sharing all these special artifacts
with us, Kathleen.
And for taking us on the tour of the boat
and just giving us a history here at the museum of science
and industry about this, really, it's a living monument
to everyone that served our country.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for your talk today.
All right.
So good.
Have a good one.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you again.
OK.
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