Archivist Timothy P. Mulligan was back in the stacks that day, running down a long shot.

A National Archives expert on German submarines, Mulligan already had found for a Virginia woman detailed records of her father’s service as a U-boat skipper during World War II. But the woman said she still wondered if her father was aware she had been born just before his boat was sunk near Iceland in 1943.

Mulligan knew that the Allies had broken the German naval code during the war, and that the archives had copies of intercepted messages to the U-boats. Maybe headquarters had radioed the skipper about his daughter. Commanders did such things.

Maybe . . .

Source: Washington Post