The jig pretty much became up for the forces of evil in World War II on April 30, 1945, when the diabolical German dictator Adolf Hitler finally abandoned his mad crusade to take over the world and committed suicide in his underground Berlin fuhrerbunker.

Less than a week later, his generals unconditionally surrendered to Allied troops. The European phase of the war known to the many thousands of American veterans who fought in its battles as “Dubya Dubya Two, The Big One” came to a screeching halt.

The May 7 surrender terms called for hostilities to cease at midnight of the following day. May 8, 1945 thus became known as Victory in Europe Day – V-E Day in the common parlance – and the free world went nuts with joy. Tomorrow, the 60th anniversary of the milestone will be marked in solemn ceremonies here and abroad, and to Americans of seasoned age that far-off time will seem as though last week.

For a group of Navy families with a Maine connection, though, the 60th anniversary of the end of the war will bring special reflection. For although it took nearly six decades for the United States Navy to acknowledge that their loved ones were lost when a German U-boat sank the submarine chaser USS Eagle 56 in Casco Bay in the final days of the war – and that the ship had not been destroyed by a boiler-room explosion as the Navy had long insisted – the wrong has finally been righted.

The Eagle 56, sailing out of Portland with a crew of 62 on April 23, 1945, was the last American warship sunk by a German U-boat. Its story, as well as how Massachusetts military historian Paul M. Lawton tenaciously fought to set the record straight and get the sailors the Purple Heart decorations they deserved, is admirably told by author Stephen Puleo in his new book, “Due To Enemy Action” (The Lyons Press, hard cover, 321 pages, $22.95).

The narrative, based largely on Lawton’s research, includes interviews with the four surviving crew members alive today, and other principals. Historically accurate, it has the bonus of being suspenseful enough to keep the reader reading several chapters beyond his intentions before turning off the light and calling it a night.

When the Eagle 56 left Portland on its date with destiny it had unlimited visibility for what proved to be its final assignment: Towing a target buoy for naval aircraft bombing exercises just a few miles off the coast.

Little did the crew know that as the Eagle 56 headed out, a German U-boat was prowling the Gulf of Maine in search of prey. The Eagle 56 would soon be “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,” as Puleo puts it.

Shortly after noon, the U-853 scored a direct hit on the Eagle 56, which went down some five miles off Cape Elizabeth with a loss of 49 men. The next day, the coastal waters teemed with ships conducting anti-submarine patrols, assisted by patrol-bombers from Brunswick Naval Air Station. Contact was made with a submerged submarine, and depth charges were dropped at the mouth of Penobscot Bay.

But the U-853 escaped the dragnet and moved down the East Coast, where after sinking a merchant ship off Point Judith, R.I., it was destroyed by the Navy on May 5, 1945 and confirmed “dead” the next day, just hours before the German army would surrender to Allied forces in Europe.

A court of inquiry was convened by the commandant of the First Naval District in Boston to investigate the sinking of the USS Eagle. But therein lay the rub. The panel headed by the Portland base commander on whose watch the sinking had occurred, seemed more determined to bury the truth than to shed light on the subject.

It is the coverup that fuels this spellbinding story. Without it, and without Lawton’s dogged determination to get the Navy to acknowledge that the loss of the Eagle 56 was due to enemy action, there would have been no book. And no rare reversal, in the late summer of 2001, of the findings of a naval court of inquiry that had stood, however shakily, for more than a half-century.

The historic correction of the record was a victory for truth, and justice for those brave sailors lost on April 23, 1945. On this 60th anniversary of V-E Day it all makes for a timely tie-in to the big picture.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net