U.S. Ship Sunk in World War II by German Sub Is Found Off Maine Coast
Source: NY Times
The U.S.S. Eagle PE-56, which lost 49 of 62 crew members, was located by a civilian dive team.
By Neil Vigdor
For nearly 75 years, the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the U.S.S. Eagle PE-56, a World War II Navy ship, eluded historians and relatives of the lost sailors. Even its location was unknown.
This week, searchers announced that the missing warship had been discovered five miles off the coast of Maine and 300 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, in a rocky warren.
A team of eight civilian divers found the wreckage of the ship, which the Navy had initially ruled was destroyed by a boiler explosion. But over five decades later, a historian convinced the Navy that the Eagle 56 was the last American warship sunk by a torpedo from a German submarine.
The searchers grappled with 40-degree water temperatures and visibility as low as five feet while locating and surveying the ships wreckage, which is protected under federal law because it is a war grave. Forty-nine of the ships 62 crew members were killed.
The wreckage of the U.S.S. Eagle PE-56, shown with a USN marking for the United States Navy, was discovered off the coast of Maine. Credit Smithsonian Channel
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/us/sunken-warship-discovered.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190720?campaign_id=2&instance_id=10978&segment_id=15399&user_id=056e064c54b8baeaaaf1a500bc480b4d®i_id=585299080720
marble falls
(57,102 posts)oldsoftie
(12,555 posts)I hate seeing great stories getting many responses locked for not being "breaking news" enough. I had one locked about the 15 yr old defeating Venus Williams. I mean, Venus losing to a 15 yr old IS pretty big news!
But then look at some of the stories that get to stay. If they fit a certain narrative, its suddenly "breaking news" all right.
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,350 posts)And don't call me Shirley.
malthaussen
(17,202 posts)Rather obsolete WWI vintage steel-hulled patrol vessels. It's funny that a sub would waste a torpedo on one, but maybe she was annoying the skipper.
-- Mal
Lulu KC
(2,567 posts)without knowing that there was a German sub that close to us--in 1945?? Need to go back and study WWII history, but who has time for that while trying to keep current news developments straight?
whistler162
(11,155 posts)Lulu KC
(2,567 posts)underpants
(182,826 posts)I read an incredibly detailed book about it to kill time when I was in the Army.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_Alley
The Torpedo Alley, or Torpedo Junction, off North Carolina, is one of the graveyards of the Atlantic Ocean, named for the high number of attacks on Allied shipping by German U-boats in World War II. Almost 400 ships were sunk, mostly during the Second Happy Time in 1942, and over 5,000 people were killed, many of whom were civilians and merchant marines. Torpedo Alley encompassed the area surrounding the Outer Banks, including Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras.[1]
They_Live
(3,234 posts)on Germany. (sigh.)
mpcamb
(2,871 posts)Donald Trumps grandfather begged to return to his German homeland in 1905.
The letter, signed by Friedrich Trump, who left Germany at the age of 16 in 1885, was unearthed at the state archives in the western German region of Rhineland-Palatinate.
When Donald Trump's German grandfather was ordered by a royal decree to leave the country (Bavaria, a kingdom in Gertmany) and never return, he wrote a letter pleading the prince regent of Bavaria not to deport him.
Friedrich Trump wrote the letter in 1905 when he returned to Germany with his wife and daughter after having emigrated to the US.
German authorities had given him eight weeks to leave and denied him repatriation because he failed to complete his mandatory military service and to register his initial emigration to the US 20 years earlier.
I don't know if he went by trump or Drumpf then but let's "Make Donald Drumpf Again".