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ss NORMANDIE 1935-1942 X

NORMANDIE -  Whom the gods love, they punishment them
NORMANDIE was loved by many and hated by only some, NORMANDIE was the peak of chic, which some could never accept, NORMANDIE was the man made Deesse de la Mer.
February 9th 2017 while writing I taste and smell the smoke over Manhattan which coloured the sky brown 75 years ago.
by Earl of Cruise
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December  22nd 1941, NORMANDIE was seized and transferred to the US Navy Department, under the name of USS LAFAYETTE, listed as AP53. To all who knew NORMANDIE, however, NORMANDIE would always be NORMANDIE nothing more, nothing less!
NORMANDIE burning
NORMANDIE burning, like a fanal - own collection
And being historian, the name should have been correct spelling with LA FAYETTE, as the ship was renamed after Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette ... a French general, politician and member of the intellectual movement of the Lumières. A man accompanied by the Prussian general and noble von Steuben who significantly helped to win the independence war.
The attac on Pearl Harbor could have been avoided, or better fought against, if the Navy had not been that careless and blind sighted on the signals they got.
The quick and easy seizure of NORMANDIE was made, as Washingtons uninformed burocrcy thought, the Vichy regime, or the France Libre exile gouvernements, or Hitler had an interest in bringing NORMANDIE back to Europe and under their control. Non of was ever in discussion on the other side of the pond.
No French politician or militarian, exiled or Vichy, wanted NORMANDIE in the center of a war and in peril. And Hilter was not even interested in Naval military or its use, he was a land bound army prick, who did not catch the naval needs or neccessaties.
NORMANDIE was the essence of what France was capable of in arts, engineering, construction, design and culture! NORMANDIE was a symbol for France! It was not only THE ambassador for France, it WAS France.
NORMANDIE side by side with civilian rival QUEEN MARY and on the other side of the CUNARD terminal AQUITANIA - courtesy LIFE
So why an unsecure escape to Europe to be catched by the Royal Navy and destroyed like the French fleet in Toulon and Africa? Or the LLOYD vessel COLUMBUS, with the help of the US Navy.
The Commission handed NORMANDIE December 24th to the US Navy, to be hastily converted into a military and troopship, based on exper­iences gained with QUEEN MARY and QUEEN ELIZABETH, and the experiences with VATERLAND / LEVIATHAN and other passenger ships in WWI. The Ameri­can desperate need for troopships helped speeding up the normally lame bureau­cracy. NORMANDIE  then was officially entered on the register ot the USA January 1st 1942.
A wartime neglected, nearly abandoned NORMANDIE
A wartime neglected, nearly abandoned NORMANDIE, becoming a shadow of the former glitz - own collection
In my eyes the 24th of December is symbolizing the later dealing with this gift from Mars. NORMANDIE was treated, my feeling, like a toy given to a boy who was not mature enough to deal with ... like a complete model train installation for a three year old child.
Converting plans were quickly put into action. And hasty actionism it was what started on NORMANDIE. At first the stored 18,000 bottles of wine were removed, along with each other item, including six pianos, four hobby horses, fitness equipment and all other fixtures and fittings. Most of which were later sold cheap at public auctions. Out of sight and out of remembering. And the Grand Sale à Manger bronze doors ended cut in seize to fit in a church. 2,400 vans were needed resulting more than US$ 100,000 transport costs. Major works of art were more or less carefully removed to storage, panellings were dismantled, statues were cut off, as the René Lalique light fountains, the statues La Paix and La Normandie, etc. Several local warehouses had  to be rented for the storage.
A private commercial company, Robins Drydock, was awarded the contract to convert NORMANDIE  into a military troopship. The work should be carried out while NORMANDIE  was still visinle to the public at pier 88. This was a massive propaganda tool for the war efforts of the USA. It was a coup de propagande.
Sadly, following a number of bizarre decisions, incompetence and careless workmen, on 9th February 1942 NORMANDIE  caught fire, and later that day capsized. Too badly damaged and too big to be salvaged at the time, she was eventually scrapped in October 1946.
NORMANDIE capzised
NORMANDIE capzised after being set under fire out of sheer carlessness
Later the conspiracy theories about the involved Mafia, or sabotage by the Germans, came all too handy for the responsible people as to be by themselve in the center of publicity. This Lucky Luciano wanted to make only his conditions better in jail, when contacting the US secret service, OAS, who fell into his trap ...
The first mistake all involved had been abandoning to read the manuals of NORMANDIE, as they had to be translated into English. Not a task at all. Or consulting the remaining crew on bord the NORMANDIE ... They had been agressive shipped off ashore and stored away like furniture. Hyper anxiety in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor made them to be treated as enemies! But literally France was not in war with the USA.
And no one knew about the decks, the ways, the staircases ... uniformend men on an unknown ship!
The second major mistake was to turn off all machinery. Was NORMANDIE eventually to complicated to handle? NORMANDIE was like a dead ship berthed at pier 88, with no ability of selfprotection - as NORMANDIE had the most advanced fireprotection system implemented on a ship, not state of the art 1935, but far ahead of time and in case most effective.
Anxiety and rush had never been a good consultant.
By February 9th 1942 work was well-advanced on adapting NORMANDIE, renamed into  USS LAFAYETTE, into a troopship, which as planed would be capable of carrying over 14,000 troops. But no firemen on guard in the whole ship, where countless torches were used to cut steel.
There were, similar to an ant hill, over 3,000 workers, most unregistered or controlled, aboard NORMANDIE, including civilian contractors, Coast Guards, Navy personnel and others. Concerns were raised about safety and secrecy on board, while each department fealt to be responsible, which rose a battle about competences ...
On board NORMANDIE it had been decided, by a certain Rear Admiral Adolphus R. Andrews to remove the four large lighting fixtures and benches in the Grand Salon. The glass segments had already been dismantled and taken ashore, and the seating removed, leaving the basic metal frames. They were seen by this certain Rear Admiral Adolphus R. Andrews as a hinderence. The carpet in the Grand Salon had been rolled up, ready to be replaced with linoleum. The artwork covering the fireproof partition between the Grand Salon and the Smoking Room had been dismantled. and the doors pushed out of the way. Also stored in the Grand Salon were bundles of lifejackets, in thousands, filled with kapok and wrapped in hessian. Nobody has thought of their fire hazard ...
Rear Admiral Adolphus R. Andrews
Standing, left to right: Rear Admiral WilliamS. Pye, Chief of Staff to Commander, Scouting Force; Rear Admiral Adolphus R. Andrews, Chief of Staff to Commander, Battle Force; Rear Admiral Frederick J. Horne, Commander, Base Force - Source: Wikipedia
The lighting stanchions were 15 feet high, on a 20 inch base that contained ventilation ducts. It was decided to leave the bases, to create large card tables, but to cut off the stanchions. As the Grand Salon was planed to be the war conference room. A welding/cutting crew were assigned to the job. The first two stanchions were removed before lunch. After lunch the two men assigned to hold asbestos sheets to contain any sparks had been assigned to other work, and the replacements hadn’t arrived. The team removed the third stanchion and moved on to the fourth one. The cutting crew had to toss bundles of lifejackets to one side creating needed space. Apart from a couple of buckets of water, there were no hoses laid down, and no other precautions taken. As the illfated Clement Derrick shut through the leg of the stanchion, sparks from the oxy-acetylene torch caught on some of the life-jackets, which quickly caught fire - 02:30 pm.
What happend now was described by John Maxtome-Graham as a burlesque Marx Brothers slapstick comedy ...
The first worker started runninig for the buckets and ended falling on the ground. the next tossed ignited lifejackets out the way only to ignite staples aside with the burning lifejackets. The foreman ran for the hose on the Promenade Deck but there was no pressure at all; the instructions were still in French which no-one could understand. And the French crew was sent off of the ship. Some of the nearby workers came running for support and hindered themselves and tosseld over each other. They finally tried to toss away the burning bundles of lifejackets, outside, but some fell on the rolled carpeting, which in turn started it burn. The central fire station had been dismantled and the replacement had not yet been set up. Why doing such unneccessary things ad hoc, when a card table is needed? The alarm system, as well the communication system, to the local city fire brigade had been disconnected when the US Navy took over the vessel. There were a few fire extinguishers in nearby lockers, but no-one knew of their existence, and by this time they would have been inadequate anyway.
The fire doors to the Main Salon, which should have been shut, were open and could not be closed as the ships machines where shut down. And the fire started to spread. Other fire doors were blocked with scaffolding, tools and debris and couldn’t be shut. Even if there would have the pressure from the machinery. Some 15 minutes after the fire started the first fire engines arrived, and soon after the first fire boat. Somebody was able to get down to the pier and grab a phone. Most of the workers were unaware of the fire, even minutes after. No alarm system was in function as well. When realizing what was happening, panic took over - me first out of the ship. The firemen struggled to get on board as all the workers were fighting to get off. Some workers had to be rescued from ladders propped up from the quayside to the bow!
Imediately after the fire broke out half Manhattan was on their legs for help or as spectators of the drama, hindering the professionals.
Burning NORMANDIE flooded by the NYFD fireboats
Burning NORMANDIE flooded by the NYFD fireboats - own collection
When the NYFD did send fireboats they immediately started pouring water on the promenade deck of NORMANDIE  to extinguish the fire. Aluminium and other metals melted in the heat created by the fire and sealed the drains. The more water was poured into the promenade deck the more it stayed on deck. And they stayed pouring water in after the fire was extinguished. 
When Vladimir Yourkevitch did aproach this certain Rear Admiral Adolphus R. Andrews for assistance to save the ship, this overqualified officer said: "This is a Navy job!" and send him in arrogance, only based on his "position", away ...
Several hours after, with too much water aboard, and no way of draining it fast enough, NORMANDIE  slowly started to list, and sadly, some 12 hours after the fire had started, she rolled over with the tide and capsized.
To me it seems as if NORMANDIE´s soul let it happen, `If you can treat me with respect, I sell my dead body as expensive as I can!´
Although many ideas were suggested in the coming months to raise NORMANDIE and rebuild the ship, it was not economical or practical, and by now the war was entering a new phase. Finally the decision was taken to dismantle most of NORMANDIE´s superstructure, to raise the hull and scrap the remains. Plans rebuilding NORMANDIE as an aircraft carrier had been also abandoned, as rebuilding her as a trooper.
Capzised NORMANDIE, renamed USS LAFAYETTE - own collection
The refloating of NORMANDIE was a grim task and set free some new inventions from the salvage company still used today. Inside NORMANDIE everything was in disorder, or better in an angel on the side. Walls became hallways in the hulk, and floors cielings and staircases had any usage any more.
When the salvage company reached the theatre, of which the fire doors had been closed, when NORMANDIE was shut down, they realized a nearly unharmed elegant room ...
NORMANDIE died like in greek tragedy - the spotless main character had to die, decided the gods, and they played out the cards for carlessness, incompetence and arrogance. After capsizing NORMANDIE stayed like a dead wale at the pier like a monument for carlesness, incompetence and arrogance. The time to refloat NORMANDIE prolongued and made the ship more and more a wreck. When salvaging NORMANDIE was beheaded as in a third act of the funeral to never give the hero a chance to get back on earth again.
When NORMANDIE was towed through the port of New York to her last place to be dismantled finally, even the hull, without the superstructur did show grace, dignity and refinement of the lines ...
lines of NORMANDIE, renamed USS LAFAYETTE and at last LIPSETT
Even schattered, the lines of NORMANDIE, renamed USS LAFAYETTE and at last LIPSETT, are still recognizable and showing the grace and one-of-a-kind artwork - own collection
After unpleasant negotiations with the US administration COMPAGNIE GÉNÉRALE TRANSATLANTIQUE got a compensation for the loss - the EUROPA, seized by the Americans in 1945 and used for some time as a troop ship. In 1939 NORDDEUTSCHER LLOYD planed replacements for BREMEN and EUROPA, which showed aging and higher maintenance costs. Further some cash, and within the Marshall Paln an extra credit to build the near sister ships FLANDRE and ANTILLES ... but USA refused to repay the real value of NORMANDIE ...
NORMANDIE much loved by most and hated by some, was the peak of chic, the man made Deesse de la Mer, which offered a stage for tout la societé for their dance on the volcano of nationalism and hate. Some times NORMANDIE was a United Nations meeting place and conference center. NORMANDIE´s early, tragic and avoidable ending made this French masterpiece like the fame of a real diva immortal. And divine this vessel was - vive le NORMANDIE.

Le NORMANDIE.

ss NORMANDIE1935-1942 X


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