page_title: Eagle-class patrol craft
section_title: U.S. service
hierarchical_section_title: Eagle-class patrol craft / U.S. service
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the USS Eagle 2 (PE-2) on builder’s trials in 1918. An identical sister ship, USS Eagle 56 (PE-56), was lost due to a mysterious explosion April 23, 1945. Although Eagle 56 survivors stated they had spotted a submarine during the sinking, the official Navy Investigation declared it lost due to a boiler explosion. Through the work of a dedicated researcher and the Naval Historical Center’s senior archivist the Navy changed this to a combat loss in 2002. Both ships were members of 60 Eagle Boats built by automaker Henry Ford for World War I. None of them were completed in time to see service in that war due to the Armistice, November 11, 1918. They were not very popular due to poor sea-keeping characteristics. The Navy discarded all but eight, before World War II. The term Eagle Boat came from a 1917 editorial in the Washington Post that called for an eagle to scour the seas and pounce upon and destroy every German submarine. U.S. Navy photo. (RELEASED) 030415-N-0000X-001 Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC (Apr. 15, 2003)
context_page_description: The Eagle-class patrol craft were a set of steel ships smaller than contemporary destroyers but having a greater operational radius than the wooden-hulled, 110-foot submarine chasers developed in 1917. The submarine chasers' range of about 900 miles at a cruising speed of 10 knots restricted their operations to off-shore anti-submarine work and denied them an open-ocean escort capability; their high consumption of gasoline and limited fuel storage were handicaps the Eagle class sought to remedy.
  They were originally commissioned USS Eagle Boat No.1 but this was changed to PE-1 in 1920. They never officially saw combat in World War I, but some were used during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. PE-19, 27, 32, 38, 48 and 55–57 survived to be used in World War II.
  Attention turned to building steel patrol vessels. In their construction, it was necessary to eliminate the established shipbuilding facilities as possible sources of construction as they were totally engaged in the building of destroyers, larger warships, and merchant shipping.
context_section_description: The term "Eagle Boat" stemmed from a wartime Washington Post editorial which called for "...an eagle to scour the seas and pounce upon and destroy every German submarine." However, the Eagle Boats never saw service in World War I. 
  Reports on their performance at sea were mixed. The introduction, at Ford's insistence, of flanged plates instead of rolled plates facilitated production but resulted in sea-keeping characteristics which were far from ideal. 
  In the first years after the war, a number of them were used as aircraft tenders.  Despite the handicap of their size, they serviced photographic reconnaissance planes at Midway in 1920 and in the Hawaiian Islands in 1921 before being supplanted by larger ships. Eagle boat 34, as related in Max Miller's 1932 book I Cover The Waterfront, shared the yearly duty alternately with the Navy tug USS Koka of capturing elephant seals on Mexico's Guadalupe Island for the San Diego Zoo. 
  A number of the Eagle Boats were transferred to the United States Coast Guard in 1919, and the balance were sold in the 1930s and early 1940s. 
  Eight Eagle boats saw service during World War II. One was stationed in Miami as a training vessel , while one, Eagle 56, was sunk by a German submarine near Portland, Maine in April 1945.  After the war, the seven remaining Eagle Boats were decommissioned.
caption: USS Eagle 2 (PE-2) on builder's trials in 1918.
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