05 July 2008
Lafayette, They Are Here
Ex-Normandie, USS Lafayette capsized at Pier 88, February 1942
They still don’t know don’t about the fire that stated on the 9th of February in 1942. It was a doozy, and it torched the Glory of France as effectively as the end-run of German panzers around the impregnable barrier of the Maginot Line.
The official investigation says that it was the result of sparks caused by shipyard worker Clement Derrick's torch, and the hasty and unfortunate placement of bales of kapok life preservers in the ship's main salon.
It is all true, that part, but at this late date, we will never know what was going on in Derrick’s brain, behind the welding goggles and face shield. A search after the war indicated the German High Command had no record of an operation to destroy the great ship. ULTRA decryptions of Nazi communications at the time contain no insight, not that they would have been passed down to the Third Naval District Headquarters on Church Street in lower Manhattan.
The ability to read those secret signals was the most sensitive secret of the war, and even that was sporadic. The full concentration of British and American intelligence was on the location of the U-boat wolfpacks that were savaging the merchant ships that were Britain’s life-line.
After Operation Drumbeat, the Nazis continued to sink the ships and precious cargo with abandon. By the end of February, the Eastern Sea Front had lost 71 merchant ships, and no end to the hemorrhage was in sight.
You don’t have to use a lot of imagination to recreate the hysteria of the time. We just did it a few short years ago. The institutions that were forced to respond to the exigencies of the war were stressed to the maximum. There was the apparatus of the City of New York, of course, but there was a military imperative that placed the Navy, and Naval Intelligence is a unique local and national role.
Remember, things were different then. The Coast Guard did not assume the formal responsibility for port security until late in the war. The Navy effort was lead by experienced Regular officers long past the age of retirement.
RADM Andrews was absorbing hundreds of Reservists into his staff, and dozens into his Intelligence office, headed by CAPT Roscoe McFall, a squared-away officer who had commanded the battleships California and West Virginia. If he was unsettled by the fact that former had been badly damaged and the latter half-sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor he did not show it. Like all the old regulars, he was in this "for the Duration."
The President had decided it was “Germany First,” and that was what he was going to do. Some of the new District Intelligence officers had been law enforcement officers; others members of the District Attorney’s staff. There was a preference for attorneys in Naval Intelligence. The young officers brought new thinking to the problem of sabotage and enemy spies.
In Dannemora Prison, Lucky Luciano had been reading about the U-boat threat, and the desperate struggle underway against Hitler’s Kriegsmarine.
His associates Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky were in regular contact, despite the thickness of the prison walls. They reported that the Naval Department was very nervous about spies and the possibility that U-boats sinking U.S. boats right in the harbor. The underworld had no love for the Axis powers, despite what people might have thought. The Fascists in Italy had been squeezing the Family, and had them on the ropes.
The Navy was concerned with threats internal and external. Beyond the U-boats, there was an offensive to be considered against the Axis powers, and the means to transport the young men who swarmed to recruiting stations. A contract for the conversion of Normandie to become Auxiliary Personnel Transport AP-53 La Fayette (she would always be known as Lafayette despite formal name) was awarded to Robins Dry Dock and Repair Co., a subsidiary of Todd Shipyards.
According to stories told long afterward, mobster Frank Costello heard about the plans for the conversion and got in touch with Luciano. He told him about an idea that Albert Anastasia had worked out with his brother, Tough Tony. Albert said that the guys from Navy Intelligence had been all over the docks talking to them about security. They were scared that all the stuff along the Hudson, the docks and boats, was in great danger. Albert had a bright idea, one so big that it would scare the Navy to death.
The Third District Logistic officer, Capt. Clayton M. Simmers, estimated that the conversion of Normandie could be complete by the end of January of 1941. It was wildly unrealistic, and corners had to be cut to make it happen.
The work would be done right at Pier 88. On the very day that Simmers estimated the work would be complete, Capt. Robert G. Coman reported as prospective commanding officer. The work was hopelessly behind. The official commissioning date as a US Ship was scheduled for 12 February, and there was no way that it could be made as an operational unit in that amount of time.
Washington initially agreed to a plea from the Simmers and Coman to delay departure from port for ninety days, but the decision was reversed. Lafayette was directed to get underway as scheduled on the 14th of February.
As you might imagine, chaos on the ship was the order of the day. Welder Clement Derrick quickly extinguished his torch after the fire began in the stacks of life jackets. According to the investigation, he joined the initial surge to try to extinguish the flames. Contractors and sailors threw themselves against the conflagration that leapt from life-jackets to elegant wood paneling, and to inflammable paint and cleaning supplies.
The Fire Department of New York was summoned, but it took them fifteen minutes to arrive, by which time the upper works of the great liner were fully ablaze, fanned by a strong wind from the northwest. The three upper decks were engulfed within an hour.
The flames were beaten down by firemen, sailors and civilian contractors. Though it still burned brightly, it was considered contained around dinnertime. The immediate crisis of fire had concealed the steadily growing problem of water. The French fittings on her fire suppression equipment were not compatible with that of the FDNY.
As a commercial ship, Normandie had no sea-cocks or scuttling valves with which she could have been allowed to settle upright into the mud a few feet below her keel.
Water from the fire-fighting flowed down to the lower decks, and the ship began to list, permitting additional war to enter the hull. Counter-flooding proved ineffective, and Lafayette began to list to port.
Shortly after midnight, City officials began to panic. Fires from the ship could threaten civilian structures nearby. RADM Andrews reluctantly directed the ship be abandoned. It was both unthinkable and inevitable, just like the collapse of the Twin Towers. At 0245, Lafayette went over, coming to rest on her port side at an angle of 80 degrees.
Considering the magnitude of the disaster, it was remarkable that only one man- a civilian ship-yard employee- was killed. Nearly two hundred fire-fighters, sailors and civilians were treated for burns, smoke inhalation, and exposure.
The public was stunned, and the newspapers fanned the flames of suspicion. Had Hitler’s agents torched the ship? Had the war come to New York City itself?
Two weeks after the Lafayette went down, President Roosevelt issued an executive order placing "full responsibility for the protection of the water front, water-front activities, and ships in our harbors in the Navy Department."
The people of New York were not the only ones reading the papers, or vicariously gawking at the great ship on its side at Pier 88. What with the clear and evident threat of Nazi sabotage, it was time to reach out and reach an accommodation that would be beneficial to all parties concerned.
The question of Clement Derrick, and who he was really working for on the afternoon of 9 February, 1942, is one that will never be answered. As things developed, it really didn’t matter why the sparks flew. They did, and they started a fire that did not stop with the sinking of the Lafayette.
It was going to burn brightly for a long time, and I have a feeling it might be smoldering yet.
To paraphrase the words of the Yanks who landed in France to fight the Germans a generation earlier, "Lafayette, they are here.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com