Unsolved Mysteries of World War II by Michael FitzGerald

Author:Michael FitzGerald [FizGerald, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781789504453
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
Published: 2019-02-05T10:34:09+00:00

Accident or sabotage?

Events soon made all of the arguments irrelevant. At 2.30 p.m. on 8 February, the ship caught fire. Two men were working with an oxyacetylene torch and sparks from it hit a pile of life jackets. The workmen tried to extinguish the flames, but there was no fire watch on board to help them. Because of the conversion, the fire alarms had been disconnected and the fire hose ran out of water almost immediately.

The blaze soon turned into a ‘surging fire’ that was impossible to control. Before long, the three upper decks of the ship were engulfed in flames. It took nearly half an hour before firefighters were able to access the vessel. They pumped 6,000 gallons (27,000 l) of water into the ship to try and quench the flames and eventually the fire was described as being ‘under control’.

Unfortunately, so much water had been pumped into the vessel that it began to tilt. Desperate attempts to stabilize the ship failed and it finally capsized 12 hours after the fire began. President Roosevelt and many navy officials suspected sabotage by Nazi agents, but some years later another possibility emerged.

The Mafia boss Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano claimed in his autobiography that he had given the order for the Normandie to be torched. He said he had devised the plan with other Mafia bosses to force the navy to allow his criminal organization to protect the docks.

Is this claim simply boastfulness after the event? There is no doubt that naval and US intelligence representatives met Mafia bosses after the demise of the Normandie. Luciano and his fellow bosses were certainly ruthless enough to have been willing to destroy a ship to further their agenda.

There was an official investigation by Congress that blamed the incident on ‘carelessness’, an ‘absence of proper co-ordination’ and ‘undue haste’. Incompetence and negligence were blamed for the disaster rather than sabotage – by the Nazis or the Mafia.

There were certainly many opportunities for spying and sabotage at this early stage of the war. Luciano’s men did effectively control the docks and they could easily have started a fire on the Normandie. Equally, the chaotic attempts to rush through the work needed to make the Normandie battle-ready led to carelessness. The last theory is borne out by the testimony of the two men whose acetylene torches started the fire.

The sinking of the Normandie may have been a tragic accident or the result of deliberate sabotage by the Nazis or the Mafia. We may never know the truth about its destruction.

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