CHIEF MACHINIST'S MATE EDWIN FREDERICK MATHYS was born on November 5, 1903 to Frederick and Sarah Mathys in Washington. His father had emigrated from Switzerland and eventually had enlisted in the United States Army, where he served for twenty-five years. Frederick Mathys was serving at Mobile AL when his fiance, 18 year old Sarah Soden, traveled east from Washington to marry him on March 19, 1902. Sarah Mathys returned to her parents' home to give birth. Sometime thereafter, the family was reunited at Fort Brady MI where daughter Katy Beatrice Mathys was born, on January 2, 1906. After Frederick Mathys left the Army, the family settled in Vancouver WA, where younger brother Harry Edson Mathys was born on February 2, 1915. By 1920 family had purchased a home in Vancouver, Washington, and Edwin Mathys attended Vancouver High School in Vancouver, Clark County, Washington.

Standing: Sarah Soden Mathys, Thomas Soden Sitting: Kate Soden, baby Edwin Mathys	Katy and Edwin Mathys About 1911

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Edwin Frederick Mathys enlisted in the United States Navy in 1922. For the greater part of his career, he served aboard submarines.

Edwin Frederick Mathys in the peacetime Navy

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On December 11, 1928 he married an Australian born woman, Eileen Mae Reynolds. This marriage ended in divorce. Edwin Mathys next married Sara Davenport Straughen, a divorcee, in Penns Grove NJ on October 6, 1934. They made their home during the war years at 210 Clinton Avenue, Oaklyn NJ. Edwin Mathys had no children by either marriage.

A pre-war Christmas Card	Mr. & Mrs. Edwin & Sara Mathys

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Chief Machinist Mate Mathys continued to serve aboard submarines, until 1945, when for a reason presently unknown he was given the choice of being on an aircraft carrier or the PE-56 on which he was serving when he died.

Chief Machinist's Mate Edwin F. Mathys was killed when the PE-56 , an Eagle-class patrol vessel, was torpedoed by the German submarine U-853 , three miles off Cape Elizabeth ME, on April 23, 1945. The loss of the PE-56 was originally attributed to accident, and it was only determined in the late 1990s that the ship had actually been torpedoed. Chief Mathys was declared missing at that time. After reexamining the evidence regarding the loss of PE-56 , the United States Navy, in June of 2001, amended the regard, and that of all those lost to killed in action.

Edwin Frederick Mathys was survived by his wife, parents, and brother Harry. He was also survived by two adopted brothers, Leonard L. and Kenneth J. Mathys, the sons of his deceased sister Katy, who had passed away in 1934.

In November of 2003, I was contacted by Patricia McKee Bauer, the niece of Chief Mathys. After I informed her of the change of status regarding her uncle's death, I advised her that her family should receive the Purple Heart in honor of his service and sacrifice to our country. Ms. Bauer and her family contacted the proper authorities, and on March 25th, 2004 Chief Machinist's Mate Edwin Frederick Mathys was awarded the Purple Heart. The Medal will be presented to the Mathys family within a few weeks of this writing.

Phil Cohen
Camden NJ, April 2004

In June of 2018 the wreck of PE-56, which had been detected on sonar, was located by divers off the coast of Maine. After the wreck had been explored and filmed, the discovery was announced to the public in July of 2019.

Phil Cohen
Bismarck ND, July 2019

Historian Brings Honor in Tragedy
by Helen O'Neill
Associated Press

For years, the Navy insisted that the USS Eagle had been sunk by a boiler explosion off Maine, but survivors clearly remembered seeing a German U-boat lurking in the area.

Paul Lawton's quest to rewrite history began in a Brockton bar on a cold March night in 1998.

Warmed by Budweisers and shots of Yukon Jack, he listened as his lifelong friends, two brothers, told the tale of a U.S. warship blown to bits just south of Portland, Maine, late in World War II, and of their father, a 32-year-old seaman who perished in the blast.

Vividly, the brothers - Bob and Paul Westerlund - recalled the sadness of the time. And they remembered the Navy explanation: a boiler explosion had split the 200-foot submarine chaser, the USS Eagle PE-56 .

A terrible accident, the Navy said, made all the more tragic because it happened on the night of April 23, 1945, just two weeks before Nazi Germany surrendered.

But their mother never believed the official version. And so she told her children what survivors had told her -that moments after the explosion, as they were diving into the frigid water, they glimpsed something dark and sinister. It rose to the surface for an instant - a submarine conning tower painted with a mischievous red horse trotting on a yellow shield.

Lawton, a lawyer and military historian, is obsessed by submarines. As a child, he spent hours drawing intricate replicas of U-boats and battleships. He has taught courses in U-boat history.

He can recite every detail of every battle and loss in the North Atlantic.

But he had never heard this story before.

Lawton knew that the trotting horse was the insignia of a German U-boat, the U-853, which the records said had sunk just one ship in New England waters - a coal tanker called the Black Point. But the brothers insisted that the U-853 also sank the USS Eagle .

Lawton's head was reeling. Forty-nine men died in the Eagle disaster. If they had died in enemy action, they would have been entitled to Purple Hearts.

They were entitled to more than being simply written off as victims of a freak accident.

Back at his apartment, Lawton pulled out his U-boat "bible," a two-inch-thick book by German historian Jurgen Rohwer. A footnote contained a reference to the USS Eagle and to its probable sinking by U-853 .

"I just couldn't believe it," Lawton said. "Why would the Navy say it was a boiler explosion?"

He started combing through the archives, calling military historians, and writing letters to various branches of the Navy. He requested the report from the court of inquiry into the sinking, and also wItness statements and deck logs.

Sorry, the replies said, but the files were missing and presumed lost.

Lawton requested the records of other ships operating in the area at the time, including the destroyer USS Selfridge, which had rescued 13 men from the sinking Eagle . Buried in the military jargon of its deck logs, he found references to sonar detections and to a hunter-killer task force of destroyers and bombers assembled to track down a submarine immediately after the sinking.

Inspired by Lawton, the Westerlunds placed a small notice in The Boston Globe, saying they were looking for survivors of the USS Eagle .

Two people contacted them immediately. John Breeze, a former naval engineer and USS Eagle survivor vividly, recalled the sinking, the rescue, the dark silhouette of the submarine. Alice Hultgren, a former WAVE remembered taking notes at the hastily convened court of inquiry at a naval dispensary where the survivors were treated.

Both were shocked when Lawton told them the official Navy explanation.

"Boiler explosion!" Breeze exclaimed over the telephone. "We all--knew it was a sub. How could the Navy deny it?"

Hultgren said, "The fellows all said there had been a sub." Their testimony filled 18 pages. Still, Lawton's letters to the Navy continued to be dismissed.

"The cause of the sinking has been determined to be the result of a boiler explosion," was the reply he received, over and over.

Lawton felt hopeless.

And then one morning in October 1999, a package arrived -a 76-page document dated June 1, 1945. It was the court of inquiry report, the formal record that the Navy insisted was missing.

Lawton would never know for sure who sent it. He did not need to.

In page after page, survivors stated they had seen a submarine. As telling as the eyewitness accounts was the convoluted conclusion. Although the report states that the blast "might have been an enemy mine or an enemy torpedo, " it concludes it "was the result of a boiler explosion, the cause of which could not be determined."

To Lawton, it was clear. Top naval officials knew that the Eagle had been sunk by a U-boat, but they could not bring themselves to publicly admit it.

Lawton was elated. Surely now the Navy would listen to him.

But nothing changed. A year passed. He continued writing letters to everyone he could think of - the Navy, the Secretary of Defense, the White House. And he continued to be told that nothing could be done.

Lawton's father, a retired judge and former state representative, became so incensed by the way his son was being ignored that he called his old friend, Congressman Joseph Moakley.

Just read the research, he asked him. See what you can do.

In late fall 2000, Moakley petitioned the Navy to reopen the Eagle investigation. Although the Navy did agree to Moakley's request, it did forward Lawton's research to the Naval Historical Center.

There, it landed on the desk of Bernard Cavalcante, an archivist who had spent 10 years working with German historian Rohwer piecing together a detailed list of all military activity on the Eastern Seaboard.

The USS Eagle was on the list, along with its sinking by the U-853 .

Cavalcante read Lawton's work in shock, marveling at the research and appalled by the Navy's response. Whatever the justification in wartime, Cavalcante thought, it was time to set the record straight.

"Cal made me believe that we could rewrite history," Lawton said.

For the next few months, that is what they tried to do. Cavalcante dug up personal notes from his research with Rohwer, as well as declassified that Lawton had not been able to find - records that documented the U-853 operating off the coast of Maine at the time the Eagle went down.

Lawton tracked down two more Eagle survivors -Harold Petersen of Rochester, N.Y., and John Scagnelli of Morris Plains, N.J. Like Breeze, both remembered being torpedoed by a submarine.

In May 2001, Cavalcante sent a letter to Navy Secretary Gordon England, enclosing a synopsis of Lawton's research and documents backing up the case. And he enclosed a rare recommendation- that the historical record be changed to state that the USS Eagle was sunk as a result of enemy action.

The ceremony was simple and solemn, tinged with sadness and with triumph. Aboard a naval museum ship in Quincy on a steamy day last June, the families of the men of the Eagle gathered for a final tribute.

The top Navy brass was there, sitting next to widows and sisters and brothers of the men who had died. The Westerlund brothers were there, along with their mother, Phyllis, 87, nervous and full of memories, especially when she met the three survivors -the last men to have seen her husband alive.

One by one, the names of the dead were read aloud as family members stepped forward and accepted Purple Hearts.

And when the ceremony was over and the speeches were done, three old men wearing caps reading "USS EAGLE" approached Lawton.

With tears in their eyes, they handed him a plaque of cherry wood and gold trim. It was engraved with a picture of a warship exploding, and included a brief description of the "forgotten disaster" and one man's quest to set the record straight.

It ended with the words. "'We thank you from the bottom of our hearts."

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD
PORTLAND, MAINE
Wednesday Morning, May 9, 1945

49 Lose Lives as Patrol Ship Sinks Off Coast
13 Survive Explosion on PE-56 April 23

CRAFT SPLIT BY BLAST; TWO BODIES FOUND;
NO REPORT YET BY NAVAL COURT

    The Navy Department Tuesday announced the sinking by explosion of an Eagle-type patrol vessel, three miles off Cape Elizabeth, and said that 49 of the ship's crew of 62 either were known dead or "missing in action."
    Thirteen survivors, including one officer, were taken from the icy water by Navy rescue ships and brought to the U.S. Naval Station, Grand Trunk Pier.
    Lt. James G. Early, USNR, of Aulander, NC, the ship's commander, was listed as missing.
    Officials said the sinking was the "worst" naval disaster in New England waters since the start of the war.
    The ship, the PE-56, attached to the Brunswick Naval Air Station, "blew up" at 12:14 p.m., April 23, 1945, as the craft was cruising in an inactive period south, southeast of Portland Light, the Navy reported.
    Bodies of only two of the 49 men listed as missing were recovered. The Navy identified them as George William Neugen, machinist's mate,1/c, USNR, of Summersfield, NC, and Paul Jaron Knapp, s 1.c, USNR, of Lake Mahopac, NY. Names of the other 47 were not released, although the Navy said nearest of kin have been notified.

No Maine Victims

    None of the 13 survivors was a Maine man, although some had taken up temporary homes here with their wives and families. One of them, Lt.(jg) John P. Scagnelli, 25, is a former captain of swimming at New York university and swam frequently and had competed in a meet the past winter at the Portland Boys' Club.
    Survivors said the 200-foot ship split in two and sank within a few minutes of the terrific explosion.
    Many of those listed as missing were trapped in below deck compart-ments.
    A Naval Court of Inquiry, headed by Capt. E. J. Freeman, USNR, commanding officer of the Portland Naval Station, convened almost immediately. The court has not yet reported its findings.
    They held knowledge that the ship recently came from repair docks after a "complete" 10-day overhauling.
    Naval craft and naval planes, which scouted the disaster area, failed to uncover a single additional body or any wreckage, other than a few pieces of timber, empty oil barrels and general debris.
    One life jacket was found later on the water but none of the survivors reported having used one to keep afloat.
    Navy officials said the water temperature at the time of the accident was 42 degrees Fahrenheit. Normally it is recorded at 48 degrees.

Rescue Lasts 17 Minutes

    Last of the 13 survivors was picked up about 17 minutes after personnel aboard a nearby destroyer and lightship had witnessed the explosion.
    The Navy said a steady geyser of water poured high into the air as the ship split amidships.
    The suddenness of the explosion, quick sinking of the ship and immediate rescue of survivors left few tales of heroism.
    Survivors remained afloat by grasping floating timber, empty oil barrels and other wreckage. Some of those who perished went to the bottom when numbness, brought on by the cold water, forced them to relinquish holds on floating objects, survivors related.
    Only two of the 14 suffered injuries serious enough to require hospital bed treatment. Others escaped with minor cuts and bruises. All were given blood plasma and morphine injections for shock and exposure.

Listed as survivors:

    Lt. (jg) John P. Scagnelli, 25, USNR, of New York City.
    John L. Breeze Jr., 22, machinist mate 2/c of Concord, NH.
    Oscar F. Davis, 23, machinist mate 3/c of Illno, MO.
    Lawrence L. Edwards, 20, gunners mate 3/c of Greer, SC.
    Cletus J. Frane, 31, machinist mate 3/c of Convoy, OH.
    Daniel E. Jaronik, 19, seaman 1/c of South Bend, IN.
    Edward G. Lockhart, 28, machinist mate 1/c of Brooklyn, NY.
    John E. Lutterell, 20, seaman 1/c of St. Louis, MO.
    Harold H. Petersen, 23, machinist mate 2/c of Henrietta, NY.
    William T. Thompson, 31, fireman 1/c of Framingham, MA.
    John A. Wisniewski, 35, radioman 3/c of Garfield Heights, OH.
   John A. Happoldt, 20, seaman 2/c of Morgantown, NC.
    Joseph C. Priestas, 23, watertender 3/c of Latrobe, PA.

Breeze, Luttrell and Petersen maintained apartments in Portland, ME, for their families. Breeze lived at 70 Morning Street, Luttrell at 7 Richland Street, South Portland and Petersen at 164 Danforth Street.

Sea Was Choppy

    The Navy disclosed that the sea was moderate, although choppy, and visibility was unlimited at the time of the explosion.
    Several crew members were not aboard ship when it sailed from the Portland pier on the fatal Monday trip.
    The 12 enlisted men, who survived the ordeal, were in crew quarters, aft below the deck. Lieutenant Scagnelli, only officer to survive, was in the forward section. He said eight men, including five officers, were on deck before the explosion. All were reported missing and are presumed dead.
    The survivors, interviewed at the Navy Dispensary here less than 24 hours after the disaster, revealed varied accounts of the manner in which each was able to free himself from below deck quarters.
    Lieutenant Scagnelli, who suffered head and hand in juries, said he was in his cabin just aft the wardroom when "a terrific explosion knocked me out of bed and against a bulkhead."
    "I was thrown just as if someone had picked me up and tossed me," he recalled.
    In a dazed condition, Lieutenant Scagnelli headed for a passageway "filled with smoke, low pressure steam and debris."
    His head swathed in bandages, Lieutenant Scagnelli continued: "The ship had listed badly. I managed to reach the Chief Petty Officer's office, where a ladder reached to the main deck.

Didn't Have to Jump

    "The magazine, I knew, hadn't gone. From the main deck there were two exits. I got past a galley on the starboard side and found myself in water up to my chest. I didn't have to jump overboard," he related.
    Once in the water the officer sighted Joseph Lydon, a radioman 2/c from Philadelphia.
    "His head was bleeding and I did not see another person. I could see the ship had split in two and I was 50 yards away when the aft section disappeared. The forward section settled and became upright, perpendicular to the water. It then sank when its compartments filled.
    "I told Lydon to follow me when I saw some floating on a metal tank by Lydon went down. I reached the oil tank to find two men on it, Luttrell and Breeze (both survivors).
    We held on for four or five minutes before it sank and then I grabbed onto some floating shores (timber) and soon a destroyer picked me up."
    Scagnelli said most of the men were on the port side at the time of the explosion, although he was on the starboard side.
    He estimated that no more than 40 seconds elapsed form the time he was knocked from his bunk until he reached open water.
    "When I was knocked out of bed, I saw no sign of life and heard no one calling for help," he said.
    He believed more than 20 men were trapped in the CPO quarters, radio shack, wardroom, officers' stateroom and officers' galley.
    Scagnelli, like other survivors, injected opinions as to the cause of the blast.

Have Varied Opinions

    Some survivors reported having seen a submarine, others likened the blast to that of a depth charge and some were in complete disagreement.
    Scagnelli said that when he boarded the rescue destroyer, he was told it had made contact with something and had dropped some depth bombs.
    The officer praised Petersen, who "gave up his wooden shores to another man, who did not survive."
    "Petersen picked up floating debris and swam it to me and to others," Scagnelli related.
    Edwards conceded to an interviewer that he had shouted to others in the water that "there's a submarine or something like it over there."
    Davis was one who heard the comment and he added, "I saw exhaust smoke coming from a sub."
    Thompson was another who "saw smoke."
    Luttrell, who had gone below from a watch, said when he left the bridge, about five minutes before the blast, "We had no contact with a submarine."

Doubts Torpedoing

    Lockhart, confined to bed by abdominal and hip injuries, injected himself into the discussion between reporters, survivors and naval officers to say that "I have seen quite a few ships hit by torpedoes, but wouldn't say this was one."
    Lockhart, who had served four years in the Mediterranean, said the explosion "was the direct opposite to a depth charge."
    "This was straight up in the air," he recalled.
    Priestas said the explosion, which knocked "my hat off" seemed as if "a depth charge had dropped in real close or we had struck a floating mine.'
    The ship was sinking when Wisniewski came on topside, he said. The radioman third-class said Edwards, Davis and Lockhart were "just ahead of me as we hit the water."
    Some of the men in the compartment failed to get out, Wisniewski recalled.
    Davis said the explosion blew a ladder from its hook in the aft compartment near the escape hatch, which forced him to wade through debris to find another exit.
    "Breeze was just ahead of me and kept urging me to stay calm," Davis said.
    Both Davis and Edwards recalled that hurried attempts to find life jackets failed. Davis said the water was too high for him to reach one.
    Edwards followed Lockhart into the water, after climbing through an escape hatch to the topside.
    "I grabbed onto a metal tank and held onto it until rescued," he said.
    Petersen, with a few minor scars on his face, said all bunks in the aft compartment were overturned and "one of them hit me."

Blast Shook Ship

    The explosion vibrated the entire ship and to Petersen sounded like a depth charge, he said.
    "It seemed like an explosion on the starboard side and in `15 seconds I was on deck and water was up to my ankles," he added.
    Once in the water, Petersen grabbed onto a piece of the practice target with Davis and Nugent, a machinist listed as missing.
    "Nugent's leg was broken and after a few minutes he lost his grip and went down," Petersen said.
    Thompson said the explosion knocked "me through a hatch opening." He lost a shoe and sock before hitting the water."
    Breeze recalled that he was on a metal tank with Luttrell. "I saw something in front of the ship and thought it was the bow," he said.
    Jaronik summed up his experience in these words, "It was a terrible concussion on the starboard side. Once in the water, I grabbed part of the target buoy. I saw Breeze floating around and heard Luttrell shout to him to head to an oil tank. Scagnelli came upon it (the tank) and the three men floated around.
    "I reached a tank on which Edwards, Gross, Goe and Knapp (the last three listed as dead) were floating. I grabbed on. One by one Goss, Goe, and Knapp disappeared."
    An empty wooden "coke" case was credited by Frane as "saving my life." He said the ship already was listing when he and Jaronik leaped over the side. "I was going under. The pressure of the ship's suction was terrific. I was looking for some floating object when a `coke' case hit me on the shoulder. I grabbed it and later grabbed a four by four."
    The ill-fated patrol vessel was one of the 60 PE ships built at the Henry Ford River Rouge Plant in Detroit in 1917-18. It was listed at 430 tons, 200 feet nine inches long, 25 feet nine inch beam and was rated at 18 knots. Her peacetime guns, the Navy said, consisted of two four-inch guns and one three-inch anti-aircraft gun. Its peacetime complement included 63 enlisted men and four officers.

The Columbian - Clark County, Washington - May 3, 2004

Sailor's Truth Surfaces

Monday, May 3, 2004
By DEAN BAKER, Columbian staff writer

Fifty-nine years after a German U-boat sank his U.S. Navy ship off the coast of Maine, Vancouver High School graduate Edwin Frederick Mathys is finally going to get a Purple Heart medal.

"It's just too bad it took so long," said his half-sister, Pat Bauer, 72, of Vancouver "It's too bad Harry wasn't able to know," said Edwin's brother, Ken, 76, of Vancouver, who in May will receive Edwin's medal, given to all troops injured or killed in battle. Another brother, the late Harry Mathys, served in the Navy for 32 years.

The Purple Heart was more than a half-century late in arriving because the government had falsely maintained that Edwin Mathys' ship sank because its boiler exploded. In fact, the submarine chaser USS Eagle was sunk by a German submarine. That means Edwin died by hostile fire, not by accident, and therefore is eligible posthumously for the medal.

Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, will present the medal at a date to be set around Memorial Day, said Baird staff member Matthew Beck.

A career Navy man with 24 years of service and rank of chief machinist's mate, Ed Mathys graduated from Vancouver High School in 1920 and enlisted in 1921.

He died when German torpedoes sank his ship shortly after noon on April 23, 1945. He was 42 years old. The incident happened just three miles off Cape Elizabeth, Maine, two weeks before Nazi Germany surrendered.

Until 1999, the U.S. Navy insisted that Mathys' ship, the submarine chaser USS Eagle, was sunk by a boiler explosion.

Only after a lengthy investigation and demands for government documents by Brockton, Mass., lawyer-historian Paul Lawton and two of the 14 survivors did the government finally release a 76-page, June 1, 1945, document about the incident. It included interviews with the survivors and proved the ship was sunk by U-853, a German submarine operating freely in U.S. waters.

"Apparently, the government wanted to keep it covered up," Bauer said.

Ken Mathys, a retired accountant, believes the government was trying to prevent people from knowing how close the enemy was to the East Coast. "They were afraid the people in New York City would panic if they knew Nazi submarines were operating that close to our shores and could have come right up the Hudson River."

Bauer never would have found out what really happened to her half-brother 59 years ago if she weren't a genealogist.

While researching Edwin's life online, she met Phil Cohen of Camden, N.J., who has created an extensive Web site about veterans in his area. Edwin had lived there on occasion when he came home from sea.

Cohen sent her a newspaper story, written last year by Helen O'Neill of the Associated Press, detailing Lawton's success in convincing the Navy to tell the real story about the end of the USS Eagle.

Research showed the German U-853 sank Edwin's ship as well as a coal tanker called the Black Point in New England waters before it was sunk itself in early May.

Forty-nine men died when the USS Eagle went down; 14 survived. Survivors John Breeze, of Concord, N.H., Harold Petersen, of Rochester, N.Y., and John Scagnelli of Morris Plains, N.J., are all still alive and remember being torpedoed.

The survivors said the 200-foot ship split in two and sank in a few minutes after a terrific explosion. Many, apparently including Mathys, were trapped below deck.

"His bunk was right where the torpedo hit. It just blew it to bits," Ken Mathys said.

Survivors remained afloat by grasping floating timber, empty oil barrels and other wreckage.

Edwin Mathys never had a chance, his siblings said.

"But I'm so happy that we found out the truth of what happened to him," Bauer said. "It's good to put him to rest."

Dean Baker writes about history, military affairs and agriculture.
Reach him at or e-mail.

FOX News - July 21, 2019

Last US warship sunk by German sub during WWII discovered off Maine

Sundday, July 21, 2019
By James Rogers, FOX News

Divers have discovered the wreck of the last U.S. Navy warship sunk by a German submarine during World War II.

Patrol boat USS Eagle PE-56 was located by a private dive team just a few miles off the Maine coast. The discovery ends a 74-year mystery about the ship�s location.

The sinking of the USS Eagle PE-56 on April 23, 1945, was originally blamed on a boiler explosion. But the Navy determined in 2001 that it had been sunk by a German submarine.

Garry Kozak, a specialist in undersea searches, announced this week that diver Ryan King, of Brentwood, N.H., confirmed in June 2018 that an object Kozak previously discovered on sonar is the vessel 300 feet down.

King's team, which later began working with the Smithsonian Channel, extensively explored the ship on the ocean floor, five miles off Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

The Naval Historical Center notes that Eagle was towing targets for Navy dive bombers when she was sunk by the German U-853. Her sinking came just two weeks before V-E Day.

Only 13 of the 62 crew members survived; they were plucked from the water by a nearby Navy destroyer.

A plaque at Fort Williams Park at Cape Elizabeth, Maine, remembers those killed when USS Eagle PE-56 was sunk during World War II on April 23, 1945.

Underwater video captured by the dive team will be aired in the fall on the Smithsonian Channel's "Hunt for Eagle 56," backing up the story of sailors who said an explosion broke the ship into two pieces, said Kozak.

Research undertaken by Paul Lawton, a Massachusetts attorney, naval historian and diver, played a key role in confirming the Eagle�s sinking.

"With the deck guns, there was no mistaking it for what it was," he said.

The U-853 was later sunk off Block Island on May 6, 1945, by depth charges from USS Atherton and USS Moberly. All hands were lost in the sub�s sinking, which occurred two days before V-E Day, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.

Researchers across the globe are working to locate sites of World War II wrecks. The wreck of an Australian freighter, for example, was recently discovered, as was the wreck of a U.S. B-24 bomber that plunged into the sea off Bermuda in Feb. 1945

And earlier this year, the wreck of World War II aircraft carrier USS Wasp was found in the Coral Sea, and the RV Petrel discovered one of the first Japanese battleships to be sunk by U.S. forces during the war. Imperial Japanese Navy ship Hiei sank on Nov. 14, 1942, in the Solomon Islands.

Wasp was also spotted on the seabed by experts from the vessel RV Petrel, which is part of a research organization set up by the late billionaire Paul Allen.

Allen, Microsoft's co-founder, died in October 2018 from complications of non-Hodgkin�s lymphoma. His research organization has discovered a host of historic military shipwrecks, such as the wrecks of the USS Helena, the USS Lexington and the USS Juneau.

The group�s biggest discovery, however, came in 2017, when Allen and his team found the long-lost wreck of the USS Indianapolis in the Philippine Sea.

In a separate project, the wreckage of U.S. B-24 bomber, for example, was found in Papua New Guinea. The plane�s wreck was found in 2018, 74 years after it was shot down during a fierce battle with Japanese forces.

Last summer, a team of scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the University of Delaware located the missing stern of the destroyer USS Abner Read, which was torn off by a Japanese mine in the remote Aleutian Islands.

Also last year, a decades-long mystery about the fate of a ship that disappeared during a World War II rescue mission was finally solved.

The wreck of the Empire Wold, a Royal Navy tug, was discovered by coastguards off the coast of Iceland. The ship sank on Nov. 10, 1944, with the loss of her 16 crewmembers.

An extremely rare World War II Spitfire fighter plane flown by a pilot who later took part in the "Great Escape" was also recovered from a remote Norwegian mountainside last year.

Edwin Frederick Mathys

Chief Machinist's Mate, U.S. Navy

03926847

USS PE-56

For years, the Navy insisted that the USS Eagle had been sunk by a boiler explosion off Maine, but survivors clearly remembered seeing a German U-boat lurking in the area.