U 68 Souvenir Piece

[Tom Piotro]

I did a double take last night when watching pawn star 5/ 28, a guy came in to the shop with a piece of U 68 which was sank by the USS Guadalcanal. The piece was shown on the preview teaser so I did a quick check to see if I still had mine.


I had always thought it was a souvenir made up for ships company from metal in the ships machine shop.
I got mine in a vet buy some 10 plus years ago , did minor research and never thought more about till last nights pawn star show.


I found official records which indicate 4 air flasks were recovered from the sinking sight of U 68, these were brought aboard the Guadalcanal.
Not sure if I can post someone's else web site but , http://www.sscityofcairo.co.uk/u68.php you will find the reference to U 68 and a photo of the same souvenir piece. That sight indicates these were made from the recovered ballast tanks.
Navy sight I believe referred to them as air flask, does not mention being cut up for souvenirs.


Question, Anyone have more information on this piece ? Is this possibly a piece of U 68?
Thank you in advance.
Tom

[Tom Piotro]

rest of the story U-68

Well I didn't get much response from WAF , but here is a response I got from someone who was aboard the Guadalcanal, I have to thank Capt. Jerry Mason who has a super U-boat web site who found Don who is the secretary for of the group that sank U-68.
Below are the 2 e-mails from Jerry and Don, bottom line is the piece of steel is from an torpedo air flask from U-68.
Tom






Hi Tom, this just in from my TG22.3 USS Guadalcanal friend (this is the task force that later captured U-505). Don is the Secretary for the group and I help by maintaining a website for them. He has one of the same plates. You are correct in saying they were made in the shipyard. My Norwegian friend said he didn’t have the tools to measure the thickness but his technical documents say the thickness of the air flask section is 9 mm which is almost exactly your dimension. I'd say you are on pretty firm ground say that the plate is from the airflask. At first I didn’t think there would be enough material to make so many plates but I did a quick calculation of the square footage of the flat part of the tank which is about 8 feet long and 21” in diameter and was surprised that they could have made over 2000 of the 2 x 4” plates from the 3 air flasks. Cheers, Jerry



Captain and Mrs. Jerry Mason, USN (ret)
http://uboatarchive.net/
http://candotg.org/



Hello Jerry – I have one of those steel plates made from a U-68 torpedo air flask– use it for a paper weight on my desk. They were passed out to the crews of the Task Group. It is my recollection that these plates were made in the Norfolk shipyard after we had returned to port from our second ASW cruise. We had sailed from Norfolk on March 7, 1944 headed across the central Atlantic for Casablanca. One of our aircraft detected U-515 the night of April 8th. and we began the search. At 0730 the morning of the 9th one of our TBMs found him on the surface and attacked with depth charges. Henke fired back and crash dived. Two of the DE’s were detached from the screen and sent to the contact position. At 0812 Pillsbury gained a sonar contact and launched a depth charge attack. Henke took his boat down to 800 ft attempting to escape. Contact was held on U-515 for the next eighteen hours while the DE’s pounded the sub. Finally at 1504 on April 9th the now badly damaged U-515 was out of control and the sub surfaced. The crew went over the side and at 1512 U-515 went down.
We later learned that we had sailed into a U-boat refueling area. The tanker U-488 was in the area to refuel U-124, U-129, U-66, U-537,and U-68. When U-124 reported a carrier in the area the Germans changed the rendezvous point but apparently U-68 never got the message, On the morning of April 10th at 0420 one of our TBM’s found U-68 on the surface and sank her with a depth charge attack … and that’s how that chunk of torpedo air flask came to be sitting on my desk.
Don