Vic Socotra

04 July 2008

Normandie

It is the 4th of July, and there will be fireworks on the Mall tonight, a colorful reminder of wartime sacrifice and revolution. People who have seen the deadly fire-colored real thing sometimes don’t like the sound. It makes them a little nervous, the way all of us feel now when a jet is too low or too close.

There was a time not long ago when the symbol of America’s vulnerability lay in grim ruin in Manhattan, smack in the middle of public view. There was no way to avert people’s eyes from what had been done. It was a striking symbol that nothing was safe, and terrorists swam in the sea of ordinary people.

No, I am not talking about the World Trade Center. I am talking about the hulk of a vast ocean liner half-capsized at Pier 88 between West 47th and 53rd Streets. The great ship lay on its side, the superstructure and sleek stacks crushing the austere industrial-style terminal building on top of the pier. The wreck was nearly as long as the thousand foot peir, and completely blocked the two berths where only weeks before the Cunard Lines Queens Mary and Elizibeth had been docked.

The wreck was the magnificent ocean liner SS Normandie, the floating symbol of the glory of France, and the real Queen of inter-continental travel, regardless of what Cunard called their ships.

No franc was spared in her construction. She had been launched three years to the day after the stock market crash of 1929 in front of two hundred thousand spectators. The 27,567-ton hull that slid into the Loire River was the largest ever launched. The wave caused by its journey into the river swamped some of the onlookers. None were killed, so the ship did not start out with a jinx, but she did sail under a shadow of bad timing.

After fitting out with the most innovative power plant in the world, and the most luxurious of fashions, she was ready for trials in April 1935. With the working press onboard, she demonstrated a top speed of 32.2 knots, and with a crash-back on her shafts, could stop from that speed in only a nautical mile.

She was a marvel. The very best Art Deco and Art Moderne touches could be found in her salons and her First Class public rooms. A third sleek stack had been added that was purely decorative- it connected to nothing but balanced her elegant lines.

The staff used it as the ship’s kennel.

Her maiden voyage across the Atlantic in 1936 set a new speed record, and her passenger list glittered with international socialites. Her last westbound crossing to New York was in late summer of 1939, on the eve of the German invasion of Poland that began the Second World War. Her owners hesitated to bring her back across the pond for fear of U-boat attack, and the floating showcase of French art, culture, cuisine and technical prowess languished at Pier 88.

Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, a short memo was drafted for the attention of Colonel Wild Bill Donovan, who had begun a frantic effort to being together an information and collection agency to manage the government transition to war. Eventually, his Office of Strategic Services (OSS) would amalgamate propaganda and clandestine operations. At the very beginning, though, President Roosevelt had made him the Coordinator of Information in Washington. His administrative advisor was a fellow named Jim Warburg, and like his boss, he had big ideas.

He wrote: "It would be a swell propaganda stunt now that we have taken over the Normadie to rename her the LAFAYETTE. What about it?"

Donovan liked the idea. He passed it along to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who also liked it, and it would up on the desk of Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Stark by the end of the month. Things moved fast in Washington for perhaps the first time. RADM Randall Jacobs, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation was tasked with making it happen.

In those days, the Navy was organized into regional areas that had complete authority over all activities of the Department. New York’s Third District was headquartered in the Federal Building on Church Street just north of the Battery. It had been formed in accordance with General Order No. 128, signed on 7 May 1903 by Acting Secretary Charles H. Darling. The Third District had full responsibility for security and good order in Connecticut, New York, the northern part of New Jersey, the Nantucket Shoals Lightship and the sea approaches to The City.

RADM Adolphus Andrews was in command. He was a perfect fit for sophisticated New York. An Academy graduate, he had been naval aide to three Presidents and Prince Axel of Denmark, skipper of the presidential yacht Mayflower and between social whirls, Commander of the Scouting Force, U.S. Fleet.

With the coming of war, he was responsible for everything that was happening in New York Harbor, and what was coming to visit.

Immediately upon the declaration of war, German navy commander Karl Doenitz initiated Operation Paukenschlag-drumbeat, in English- and dispatched a force of U-boats to commence operations off the US East Coast.

Less than two weeks after the memo from Jim Warburg was approved by Wild Bill Donovan, President Roosevelt approved the seizure of SS Normandie, and the Auxiliary Vessels Board issued orders that she be converted to a "convoy unit- troop transport." Admiral Andrews was directed accept the ship "under conditions satisfactory to the Bureau of Ships."

Admiral Andrews had his hands full. The five Paukenschlag U-boats arrived off the United States east coast in January of 1942. America had been in the war for barely a full month. The astonished submarine skippers found the American merchant fleet sailing unescorted and with lights on at night. Their hulls were silhouetted against the blazing lights of Manhattan. There was no radio discipline, and ship and shore stations broadcast time signals and weather reports in the clear.

The U-boats operated at will all along the Coast, from the Canadian approaches to the Gulf of Mexico, sinking every ship they encountered. Winston Churchill commented that it made Pearl Harbor pale in comparison. Although the operation lasted only ten days, 25 ships amounting to 200,000 tons were sunk. Not one of the five Drumbeat boats suffered a scratch.

Under orders from Admiral Andrews, a detachment of six Coast Guard officers and two hundred and seventy-seven sailors moved into the Art Deco lounges of Normandie. Naval Intelligence agents were dispatched to the streets to search for spies and saboteurs.

Survivors of some of the U-Boat attacks had been rescued by the Germans, and when repatriated, they reported American goods were present on the submarines, and it looked like a Fifth Column might be supplying them from American ports. The Navy had an advanced case of the Willies.

Admiral Andrews had a hell of a problem, and he was prepared to do just about anything to mitigate it.

That was something that occurred to a man confined in the Siberia of the New York State Prison system, the Clinton Correctional Facility in the remote Adirondack village of Dannemora.

He had been in the cooler for nearly four years and he was tired of it. He had been born in Italy, but in his brief decades in America he had transformed himself from a street urchin named Salvatore Lucania into Mr. Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

Then he had reinvented the Mob.

He was about to reinvent part of the United States Navy, too.

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