 Skew-Hermitian decomposition of a unitary matrix

The displayed parts of a unitary matrix are skew-Hermitian matrices. Expanding $U{U}^{†}=U^{†}U=I$ gives $AB=BA$ and $A^2+B^2=-I$. They admit a common orthonormal eigenbasis. For a unitary eigenvalue $u$, the corresponding part eigenvalues are $i\mathrm{Im}u$ and $-i\mathrm{Re}u$. If $U^T=-U$, then $U^{†}=-\overline{U}$, so these are exactly its real and imaginary parts and both are real skew-symmetric matrices. Such an invertible antisymmetric matrix has even dimension, by its determinant. If one part has distinct eigenvalues, commutation alone shows its one-dimensional eigenspaces are preserved by the other part.