Due to Enemy Action

by Stephen Puleo

Due to Enemy Action tells for the first time a World War II story that spans generations and straddles two centuries, a story that begins with the dramatic Battle of the Atlantic in the 1940s and doesn't conclude until an emotional Purple Heart ceremony in 2002. Based on previously classified government documents, military records, personal interviews, and letters between crew members and their families, this is the saga of the courageous survival of ordinary sailors when their ship was torpedoed and their shipmates were killed on April 23, 1945, and the memories that haunted them after the U.S. Navy buried the truth at war's end. It is the story of a small subchaser, the Eagle 56, caught in the crosshairs of a German U-boat, the U-853, whose brazen commander doomed his own crew in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to record final kills before his country's imminent defeat. And it is the account of how one man, Paul M. Lawton, embarked on an unrelenting quest for the truth and changed naval history.

Author Stephen Puleo draws from extensive personal interviews with all the major players, including the three living survivors (and a fourth who emerged as the book went to press); a senior U.S. naval archivist who worked with German historians after the war to catalog U-boat movements; and the son of the man who commanded America's sub-tracking "Secret Room" during the war. Due to Enemy Action also describes the final chapter in the Battle of the Atlantic, tracing the epic struggle that began with shocking U-boat attacks against hundreds of defenseless merchant ships off American shores in 1942 and ended with the sinking of the Eagle 56, the last American warship sunk by a German U-boat.

Genres: World War II, Nonfiction, History

228 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2005

About the author

Stephen Puleo is an author, historian, teacher, public speaker, and communications professional. His eighth book, The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union, was published by St. Martin’s Press in April, 2024.

Follow Steve on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/stephenpuleo...) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/puleosteve/) or visit his website (https://www.stephenpuleo.com/) for current news and events.

Steve's previously published books are:
• Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America’s First Humanitarian Mission (2020)
• American Treasures: The Secret Efforts to Save the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address (2016)
• The Caning: The Assault That Drove America to Civil War (2012)
• A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900 (2010)
• The Boston Italians: A Story of Pride, Perseverance and Paesani, from the Years of the Great Immigration to the Present Day (2007)
• Due to Enemy Action: The True World War II Story of the USS Eagle 56 (2005)
• Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (2003)

All of Steve’s books have been Boston regional bestsellers and have received national recognition. His work has been reviewed favorably by the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, Parade magazine, The National Review, Forbes.com, C-SPAN, the Associated Press, the Portland Press Herald, the Providence Journal, the Hartford Courant, Kirkus Reviews, Barnes and Noble Review.com, Library Journal, Booklist, History.com, and Publishers Weekly. Numerous national media outlets have interviewed Steve, including NBC, the New York Times, Parade magazine, History.com, C-SPAN, the History Channel, the Associated Press, and regional and national radio and television outlets.

An experienced, dynamic, and in-demand speaker and presenter, Steve has made nearly 700 appearances before thousands of readers – including bookstore signings, keynote addresses, library presentations, historical societies, industry events, book clubs, and appearances at universities and public and private schools. His showcase appearances include: speaking events at both the National Archives and the National Constitution Center; as a keynote for the 150th Anniversary Celebration of the Massachusetts Superior Court; and as a participant with Italian-American and Jewish-American scholars on a panel entitled, Italy and the Holocaust, presented at UMass-Boston. If you would like more information about having Steve appear at your event, please contact him at spuleo@aol.com.

A former award-winning newspaper reporter and contributor of articles and book reviews to publications and organizations that include American History magazine, Politico, the Boston Globe, and the Bill of Rights Institute, Steve has also taught history at Suffolk University in Boston and at UMass-Boston. He has developed and taught numerous writing workshops for high school and college students, as well as for adults who aspire to be writers. His books have been woven into the curricula of numerous high schools and colleges, and more than 30 communities have selected his books as “community-wide reads.” Steve also conducts book-club tours of Boston’s North End, one of the nation’s most historic neighborhoods.

Steve holds a master’s degree in history from UMass-Boston, where he received the Dean’s Award for Academic Achievement and was the Graduate Convocation keynote speaker. His master’s thesis, From Italy to Boston’s North End: Italian Immigration and Settlement, 1890-1910, has been downloaded nearly 30,000 times by scholars and readers around the world.

Steve and his wife Kate live south of Boston and donate a portion of his book proceeds to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).

Reviews

[JD · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books where the author puts in all his research and tries to tie the story into it. There is a lot of historical information in the book that could have been left out as it has no bearing on the story of the USS Eagle Boat 56. The story of the PE56, it's men and it's sinking by U-boat though is interesting and just covers the first 60% of the book, and is then followed by the investigation more than 50 years later that reveals that the boat was indeed sunk by enemy action and not an internal boiler explosion as the official report stated. This last part I did not like personally, but readers that like investigation books would probably like this part.

[Sykes · Rating 4 out of 5]

My uncle, Harold Petersen, was one of the survivors and will be greatly missed.
(Amazon.com) An account of the fifty-year struggle of the surviving crew members and families of the USS Eagle-56, whose sinking by a German U-boat near the end of World War II was wrongly ascribed to a boiler-room explosion. This vivid narrative strives to clear their names and set the record straight.

[Dan Rosenblum]

The interest in WWII Naval stories lies in achieving a better understanding of what it was that enabled so many thousands of men to venture into the North Atlantic facing the possibility of sudden death from enemy U-Boats as my father did along with tens of thousands of others who participated in the longest and most crucial battle of WWII, the Battle of the North Atlantic. Here is a story which includes first hand descriptions at a time and in a place where the risk was thought to be minimal, so low that the Navy mis-classified the torpedo attack as a boiler explosion unrelated to contact with the enemy, an error that went uncorrected in the face of strong evidence to the contrary for too many years. The risk was real even in the last days of the War. Even though they were clearly going to lose the war along with most of their U-Boats and most of their crews, the Germans continued to launch torpedo attacks on Allied ships until the last day of the War.

[Dave Hoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A subchaser gets torpedoed by U-853, Nazi sub at the last days before Germany surrenders. Because this happened just off Portland Head light, the Navy is embarrassed that enemy subs got so close to US mainland (us Coast Guardsmen knew) so they called the sinking, "due to a boiler explosion". 55 years later a lawyer learned of the lie and set to work righting the record so the crew, living & dead would get their combat medals. My interest was as Good Friday, 1953 my Coast Guard Cutter had a sub contact near Newport, R.I. that turned out to be U-853, sunk at the close of the war & forgotten.

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty great book that covers a notable example of historical revision. PE-56 and its story is one of tragedy and the emergence of truth. The last few months of the war were so chaotic that PE-56 and its fate were lost in the shuffle. Now that her cause of sinking is truly known, her lost sailors may finally rest in peace. Her story and the historical investigation are extremely entertaining, and this was a fun read.

[Lori-Suzanne Dell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, excellent story. Well written, well researched.

[Kevin Borth]

Excellent

[Larry Swonke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well researched and written. I never knew about this ship until I recently visited Portland Maine