| World History Monday, February 9, 1942. : The SS Normandie burns and sinks in New York Harbor. The Normandie, the largest and most luxurious ocean liner on the seas in the 1930s and 40s, was a French ocean liner built in Saint-Nazaire, France. It was launched in 1932 and made its first transatlantic crossing in 1935. Two years later, it was reconfigured with four-bladed propellers, meaning it could cross the Atlantic in under four days. The breakout of WWII caused the Normandie to be stuck in New York Harbor, placed in custody to protect it from possibly being captured by the Germans, as France had surrendered to Germany. After Pearl Harbor catapulted the USA into the war, the Navy seized the liner and began converting it into a troop ship. On 9 February 1942, during the conversion, sparks from a welding torch ignited a fire in a stack of thousands of lifevests that had been stored in the first class dining room. The fire quickly spread, and water being poured from fireboats caused the ship to capsize. Fire damage was too great to salvage the Normandie: in 1946, the once grand and elegant ship was cut up for scrap metal. |
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