The Sinking of the USS Eagle 56
It took 56 years to learn the truth about a Navy ship that was sunk off Cape Elizabeth by a German U-Boat
On April 23, 1945, a mere two weeks before WW2 ended, a US Navy patrol ship exploded and sunk just three miles off the coast of Cape Elizabeth. Of the 62 men onboard, only 13 survived. It remains the greatest loss of life in New England waters in history.
The Navy officially said the ship had a “boiler explosion” in the engine room. But the survivors claimed that a German U-boat had actually torpedoed them. The Navy disagreed, classified it as an accident, and closed the files.
The survivors stuck to their story and over 50 years later, the truth came out. With the help of the last 3 survivors, a lawyer was able to convince the Navy in 2001 that the ship was in fact sunk by a German torpedo. Their deaths were reclassified as having been the “result of enemy action.” It was the only and only time that the Navy has overturned such a decision. The 62 men received Purple Hearts, all but 3 posthumously.
The Eagle Lands in Portland
The 200 foot long USS Eagle 56 arrived in Maine on June 26, 1944. By that time, it was a bit of a relic, a leftover from WW1. It was built to be a submarine chaser in the 1st war, but wasn’t constructed until the war was over in 1919. It remained in active duty, performing various lighter duties for the Navy. Attached to Brunswick Naval Air Station, it was assigned to patrol Portland Harbor and Casco Bay.
Keeping Sharp and Bombing Pickles
Because WW2 was in full swing, NAS Brunswick was constantly training and practicing just in case they got deployed to Europe or the Pacific. On the morning of Monday, April 23, 1945, the USS Eagle 56 towed a floating green target that the men called a “pickle” out into the Bay, just off the shores of Portland Headlight. Squadrons of Grumman Hellcat and Avenger aircraft took off from NAS Brunswick and used the pickle for target practice (it was a bit cost prohibitive to use real submarines for these exercises). The Hellcats were fighters and the Avengers bombers.
A Rude Lunchtime Surprise
The aircraft finished their practice around noon and headed back to Brunswick, leaving Eagle 56 to fetch the beat-up pickle and head back in to harbor. As lunch was being prepared, the ship was rocked by a massive explosion in the middle of the ship. A spray of water shot 300 feet in the air.
The ship broke in two and quickly sunk. Panicked survivors jumped into the frigid waters.
Some of the survivors said they witnessed a U-boat surface bearing a distinctive red horse on a yellow shield on the tower. It just so happens that one U-boat, U-853, was known for just such a colored shield. They said they watched as some of the German crew climbed out of the tower and took photos to confirm the kill. The defenseless men expected that the Germans would turn their machine gun on them as they floated but instead they closed the hatch and the submarine disappeared.
Rescue
The USS Selfridge, a destroyer that had survived Pearl Harbor, was patrolling Casco Bay a few miles away when they saw a large plume of smoke. They hustled over to it in time to pluck 13 survivors (and 2 dead) from the 40 degree Bay. 47 men went down with Eagle 56. The Selfridge dropped depth charges but failed to hit anything.
The survivors, dubbed the “Lucky 13” by the newspapers, were brought to the Frontier Naval Base in downtown Portland to recover.
Disagreement or Cover-up?
The following week, a Naval Board of Inquiry met in Portland to determine what happened that day. 5 of the 13 survivors claimed to have seen the U-boat, but the Board somehow concluded instead that the ship’s boiler had exploded on the ship causing the accident. The implication was that they hadn’t maintained the ship and that the destruction and deaths were caused by their lack of care. This decision deprived the men of proper recognition and possible Purple Hearts – and left a bitter taste in their mouths.
One rumor is that the Commander of NAS Brunswick was trying to cover up the truth. With the War almost over, and Hitler’s troops days away from giving up, it would have looked bad if a US warship, so close to home, had been sunk.
Quest for the Truth
It was not until March of 1998 that the case of Eagle-56 was revived. In a Brockton, Mass bar, a Naval historian and lawyer named Paul Lawton had a casual conversation with the two grown sons of one of the Eagle‘s crew members. He had heard about the Eagle, but didn’t know the connection to the U-boat.
Lawton was intrigued. He found the three remaining survivors and interviewed them. Then he asked the Navy for all records concerning the incident (which they reluctantly provided). He even reached out to German war historians as well with their access to U-boat records. Based on his findings, he petitioned the Navy to reopen the court of inquiry concerning the case.
According to Lawton, there was no way that the accident could have been caused by a boiler explosion. Boiler explosions might have been common in the 1800s and sunk wooden ships, but “it was physically impossible for a boiler to sink a steel-helm warship.” And, it was known that U-853 was actively hunting off the coast of New England at the end of the war. In fact, U-853 sunk one more ship after Eagle-56 (read below).
History is Amended
Lawton sent all of his evidence to the Chief of Naval Operations. The Chief forwarded the documents to the authorities at the U.S. Naval Historical Center. The evidence was convincing and on June 26, 2001, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England signed the formal recommendation that the cause of the loss of the USS Eagle PE-56 be changed from an accidental boiler explosion to a torpedo attack by the German U-boat U-853. At long last, the truth of the ships’ fate came out.
Search for the Wreckage
Years later, Lawton contacted Garry Kozak, an accomplished underseas searcher who was a pioneer in side-scan sonar. Together with a private team of 8 divers called the Nomad Expedition Team, they started searching for the wreckage of the Eagle-56. Starting in 2000, they made 12 trips over a 6 year span but came up empty. In 2011, he reviewed all sonar scans and identified a possible target.
Then in June 2018, a group of NH divers contacted Kozak, interested in continuing the search. He asked them to check the object he identified in 2011 first. The divers went to the spot and, at a depth of 300 feet, came upon a “wall of steel” that was indeed the bow of the Eagle.
The problem is that they only found the bow of the ship which didn’t contain the engine room with the supposedly exploded boilers. To finally prove that the boilers didn’t cause the explosion, they needed to locate the rest of the ship.
Starting with the confirmed bow location, Lawton reviewed his previous sonar imagery and identified a possible target nearby. He relayed the location to the dive team and they indeed found the stern right where he said it might be. They also found that both boilers were intact, proving definitely that the Navy’s initial claim was false. It just took 73 years for the truth to come out.
In total, they performed 20 more dives documenting the wreck. Each dive took 4 minutes to get down to the wreck. Because of the depth, ascents took 3 hours so the divers could avoid decompression sickness. Visibility is 10 feet at the most.
The location was a mere 1/3 of a mile from the official location that the Navy had give years before.
Long Overdue Recognition
The Navy awarded Purple Hearts to the crew of the Eagle (or their survivors) during a ceremony in 2002 aboard the USS Salem in Quincy, Mass.
A Memorial to the disaster was also erected in Fort Williams Park. The wreckage site is deemed a war grave, so is protected.
A few books have been written about the story and the Smithsonian Channel did a 3 part series about the Eagle-56.
A History of USS Eagles
USS Eagle 56 was officially known as PE-56 – with PE standing for “Patrol Eagle.” The Eagles were relics, having been commissioned for use in WW1 as sub-chasers but the War ended before they could be put to actual use. Although 7 were built just before the end the war, none of them saw any combat. A total of 60 ended up being built in 1918 and 1919, and a few, like Eagle 56, were still in use during WW2. The 56 designation is because it was the 56th (out of 60) Eagles built.
The Eagle was 200 feet long, powered by a steam turbine that allowed the ship to travel at speeds up to 18 knots. A typical complement was about 63 men (56 enlisted, 5 officers).
Eagle-56 had only 62 men on board that day because one of them had just gotten married and was on his honeymoon. Lucky guy.
The U-boat Problem
During WW1, German U-boats sank over 5,000 US merchant ships and 100 warships. They were a very effective menace and disrupted shipping up and down the East Coast. The Navy needed a ship that could chase U-boats and drop depth charges. And they needed a lot of them to built quickly.
Henry Ford’s Assembly Line
In 1917, All of the “regular” shipyards were busy constructing destroyers and large warships. So President Woodrow Wilson reached out to Henry Ford who knew how to build lots of things quickly.
Ford and his engineers proposed a simple design and was awarded a contract for 100 ships. He was confident that their auto building prowess would carry over to shipbuilding. He was later awarded 12 more ships for the Italian government.
Ford constructed a brand new plant outside Detroit and started cranking out ships. But it didn’t go very smoothly. It turns out that just because you’re the best in the world at building cars on an assembly line, it doesn’t mean you can build warships. The auto construction techniques Ford mastered didn’t translate that well and the quality of the resulting product wasn’t great (welds, panel joins). The sheer size of the ships meant that the typical assembly line techniques couldn’t be used so the ships had to be assembled in pieces. Though 8,000 toiled, it took far longer than Ford promised to produce each ship. Once complete, the ships were sailed out through the Great Lakes, up the St. Lawrence River, and on to their destinations. After a very slow start, the final ships took only 10 days to construct from start to finish.
Where the Name Came From
The term “Eagle Boat” stemmed from a wartime editorial in The Washington Post which called for “…an eagle to scour the seas and pounce upon and destroy every German submarine.”
The Eagle Ships After the War
When WW1 ended, the Navy dropped their order for Eagle-class ships from 100 to 60. The 60th was finished in late 1919. Reviews of their performance was mixed at best, with some citing that the Ford design and construction just didn’t put out good ships.
Some of them were transferred to the Coast Guard but they took them out of service saying they didn’t maneuver well enough.
By the 1930s, most had been sold, used for target practice, or wrecked. When WW2 rolled around, only 8 of the original 60 were still in use, including PE-56.
Ironically, on Feb 28, 1942, Eagle-56 rescued the survivors of the first US warship sunk by U-boats in WW2 (the USS Jacob Jones, off Cape May). She both rescued the first U-boat victim and was the last.
The U-boat and its Renegade Captain
After sinking Eagle-56, U-853 continued stalking New England and looking for more shipping targets. The day after it sunk Eagle-56, the USS Muskegon made sonar contact with it and dropped depth charges, but U-853 escaped and headed further South.
On May 4th, all remaining U-boats were ordered to cease offensive operations at 9am on May 5th and return to their bases. Although the official surrender didn’t happen until May 8th, the war was effectively over.
The young 24 year old captain of U-853, Helmut Frömsdorf, either didn’t receive the order or simply chose to ignore it and fight to the end.
On May 5th, U-853 was ignoring the command and lying in wait off the coast of Rhode Island hoping to inflict some last-minute damage. When it saw the 368-foot collier Black Point (a cargo ship carrying coal) off the coast of Point Judith, Rhode Island, it fired two torpedoes. The ship sunk, 12 men died, and 34 were rescued. The Black Point was the last ship to be destroyed by the Germans.
Seek and Destroy
US Ships were dispatched and 2 K-class blimps flew up from Lakehurst, NJ to find U-853 and destroy it. Using sonar, they located the U-boat at a depth of 100 feet just after midnight. Submerged, the submarine could not move very fast and must have chosen to try to hide. Depth charges were dropped, some wreckage was seen on the surface, but sonar showed that the submarine was still slowly moving. So the ships encircled the location and dropped a whole lot more depth charges and the hovering blimps dropped pressure bombs intended to crack the hull. It worked and more wreckage floated up including the captain’s hat.
Divers were sent down and they confirmed that it was indeed U-853. They saw holes in the bow and bodies scattered around. The “Battle of Point Judith” was over, as was the German navy.
The wreck of U-853 is a popular dive spot.
