David,

Welcome to the forum. 4 days is pretty early in your discovery/investigation. I had a similar situation (family member's ship sunk by uboat) and I remember my adrenaline was pumping pretty good when I found my first few nuggets of information. That's was two years ago and I'm still learning new things.

You're right that your lucky it was U-505 because there is so much out there on that particular boat. Can't really help you on the content of those books, but books are reviewed on this site and a list of books pertaining to a particular U-boat (unfortunately not usually to a particular ship sunk)can be found at the bottom of each U-boat summary.

In addition to books and movies there are many other excellent sources of information (and in the case of movies, better and more accurate). A lot of which is on this site. In the members area there is a brief description of the attack as well as a picture and various specifications of the Benmohr.

It all depends on how far you want to take your investigation, but in my opinion the best sources are the actual reports that would have been filed by both sides.

The U-boat captain filled out a daily diary called a KTB, would have a description of the attack (copies at U.S. National Archive in D.C. - more on that later)and since torpedos were so cutting-edge and expensive, each had thier own serial number and a report had to be filed for each one fired. There can be a lot of very interesting details on that including a sketch of the attack. Those are kept in Germany, more on that later as well. That covers the German side. On the allies' side, there was probably a report filed by the plane that rescued the survivors and there may be an interrogation of the surivors by the allies to try and learn as much as they could about the U-boat and possibly it's identity. If they still exist, those are most likely in either the British or American Archives.

I'm running on here a bit for the forum, so if you are interested in pursuing these leads please refer to my reply to the posting titled "U-boat Deck Logs" one page back in General Discusions.

Also, the link to the Museum of Science & Industry doesn't seem to be cooperating. Try this link: [www.msichicago.org]
If you have a high speed connection the VR Tour is very cool.

Good Luck!

Eric