Why the USS Pillsbury attempted to board a sinking enemy submarine rigged with explosives during WW2 — and pulled off something the US Navy hadn't done in 129 years. This World War 2 story reveals how eight American sailors jumped onto a circling U-boat and risked everything.
June 4, 1944. Lieutenant Junior Grade Albert David, assistant engineering officer aboard USS Pillsbury, watched a German submarine break the surface 700 yards away. The U-boat was damaged, flooding, and rigged with demolition charges set to explode. Every naval protocol said destroy it immediately. No American warship had boarded an enemy vessel at sea since 1815. Command said it was impossible.
They were all wrong.
What David discovered that Sunday morning wasn't about destroying the enemy. It was about capturing something in a way that contradicted everything the Navy had trained him for. He had minutes before the submarine sank. German sailors had already opened the sea valves. The clock was ticking.
What his eight-man team found inside that U-boat — and why the Navy kept it classified for over a year — changed the course of the Atlantic war. Three thousand American sailors who witnessed the capture kep
