Normandie: Death Of A Legend
On December 24, 1941, barely
1 month after Pearl Harbor, work was started to convert the liner Normandie into the
troopship Lafayette. Work went on for about three months--until disaster struck.
On February 9th, 1942, while workers were cutting the last of four metal supports for the "fountains of light" in the dining room of the Normandie. However, a spark from the acetylene torch reached the Kapok-filled lifejackets--highly flammable material. They caught fire quickly, and the fire soon spread.
If the fireboats (left) had not tried to put out the fire, the ship might have survived. However, they continued pumping water into the ship. The ship soon began to list because of the huge amount of water pumped into the left side of the ship. At 6:00 P.M., the fire was out, but the ship capsized during the night.
The Navy eventually salvaged the ship, at the huge (at the time) cost of $4.74 million. By September 1943, the ship was raised, but she was towed to the drydock--only to find that damage to her hull made it to expensive to restore. She was sold for scrap after the war.
