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.

During the post-war military cutbacks, he wrote a series of articles criticizing the heavy reductions being made to the US Navy.

In the late 1930s, he won at the National Air Races in a race-tuned Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo plane.

While in Britain, he earned his flight pay by ferrying Supermarine Spitfires from the factory to Royal Air Force aerodromes.

[6] In 1942, Gallery took command of the Fleet Air Base in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he was awarded the Bronze Star for his actions against German submarines.

On this cruise, Gallery pioneered 24-hour flight operations from escort carriers in order to hunt U-boats, which had begun remaining submerged during daylight to avoid carrier-based aircraft.

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.

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.

Based on reports from the engine room, the captain believed his boat to be heavily damaged and ordered the crew to abandon ship, which was done so hastily that full scuttling measures were not completed.

The destroyers in range used their .50 caliber and 20 mm antiaircraft guns to chase the Germans off the vessel so the boarding party could get onto her.

(This was a primary goal of the mission because it would enable the codebreakers in Tenth Fleet to read German signals immediately, without having to break the codes).

For capturing U-505, Task Group 22.3 was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation and Gallery received the Distinguished Service Medal.

(Two noted naval historians, Samuel Eliot Morison and Clay Blair, Jr., take opposite views of Gallery's case.

After the war, King personally approved the award of the Presidential Unit Citation to Task Group 22.3 for the capture of the U-boat.

Johnson planned to scrap the carrier fleet, merge the Marine Corps into the Army, and reduce the Navy to a convoy-escort force.

Gallery's final command was the Tenth Naval District in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from December 1956 to July 1960.

His fictional books are humorous except The Brink (1973), which is a dramatic novel about the United States and the Soviet Union set aboard a Polaris Missile submarine.