Nearly 80 years ago, a U.S. naval patrol boat sank three miles off the coast of Cape Elizabeth.
The cause was at first believed to have been a mechanical problem. But it was later learned that the USS Eagle 56 was actually the second-to-last ship sunk by Nazi Germany in the final days of World War II. A VFW ceremony remembering the Eagle and the 49 crewmembers lost was held Tuesday at Portland Head Light.
Military personnel from different branches and enlistment eras came to Fort Williams Park Tuesday pay their respects. Among them, the crew of the USS John Basilone, a guided-missile destroyer built at Bath Iron Works that will be delivered to the Navy later this year.
Exactly 79 years ago, a week before the ultimate military defeat of Nazi Germany, the USS Eagle 56 was sailing about three miles off the coast of Cape Elizabeth when the ship suddenly exploded, and was torn in half. Within visible sight of the Portland Head Light, the Eagle sank and took with it the lives of 49 of the 62 crew members on board.
The official Navy inquiry concluded that the sinking was caused by a boiler that exploded. That was despite accounts from witnesses who said they saw a submarine in the vicinity at the time of the attack. The report blamed the engineers aboard the Eagle for the mechanical error. Requests to issue Purple Heart honors to the crew and their next of kin were denied.
But now, 79 years later, history remembers THE USS Eagle 56 and her crew as the second-to-last U.S. Naval ship sunk by Nazi Germany in World War II, and the target of a German U-boat attack. That is largely due to the work of attorney and naval historian Paul Lawton.
"There was no way that those boilers could have failed and caused the massive explosion that lifted the ship out of the water and broke it into," Lawton said.
Lawton led an effort in 2000 convincing the Secretary of the Navy about the true cause of the wreck. Lawton argued the assailant was U-853, a German U-boat submarine that would be sunk in early May 1945 by U.S. warships off the coast of Rhode Island. In 2001 the Navy launched a new investigation and formally reclassified the sinking as the result of enemy action. The following year, the Navy awarded Purple Heart medals to the casualties aboard the Eagle. When divers discovered the wreck of the Eagle in June of 2018, they found the ship's boilers fully intact.
Two memorials have since been erected at the Head Light, the first one was installed in 2005. Lawton was in attendance and remembers seeing Lieutenant John P. Scagnelli, the Eagle's engineering officer, at the ceremony.
"As the engineering officer, he was responsible for all of the crew and the machinery. He had to carry that burden that he was somehow responsible for the loss of the ship. He was relieved after 56 years that his name was finally cleared, that it wasn't his fault that it was a result of enemy action, and that all of his men died as heroes," Lawton said.
Scagnelli and the other dozen survivors have since passed away. Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the USS Eagle's sinking.
