Salvage of the USS Lafayette (SS Normandie) US Navy Technical Report

more at http://quickfound.net/

SALVAGE OPERATIONS FROM TIME OF THE FIRE TO DRYDOCKING THE SHIP. WORK OF SALVAGE ENGINEERS AND DIVERS, DESIGN AND PLACEMENT OF PATCHES, SHORING DECKS AND BULKHEADS, PLACEMENT OF PUMPS, STOPPING LEAKS WITH CONCRETE, AND MOORING THE SHIP DURING PUMPING.

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Normandie

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The SS Normandie was a French ocean liner built in Saint-Nazaire, France, for the French Line Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT). She entered service in 1935 as the largest and fastest passenger ship afloat, crossing the Atlantic in a record 4.14 days, and remains the most powerful steam turbo-electric-propelled passenger ship ever built.

Her novel design and lavish interiors led many to consider her the greatest of ocean liners. Despite this, she was not a commercial success and relied partly on government subsidy to operate. During service as the flagship of the CGT, she made 139 westbound transatlantic crossings from her home port of Le Havre to New York. Normandie held the Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing at several points during her service career, during which the RMS Queen Mary was her main rival.

During World War II, Normandie was seized by U.S. authorities at New York and renamed USS Lafayette. In 1942, the liner caught fire while being converted to a troopship, capsized onto her port side and came to rest on the mud of the Hudson River at Pier 88, the site of the current New York Passenger Ship Terminal. Although salvaged at great expense, restoration was deemed too costly and she was scrapped in October 1946...

On 20 December 1941, the Auxiliary Vessels Board officially recorded President Franklin D. Roosevelt's approval of Normandie's transfer to the U.S. Navy. Plans called for the vessel to be turned into a troopship ("convoy unit loaded transport"). The Navy renamed her USS Lafayette, in honor both of Marquis de la Fayette, the French general who fought on the Colonies' behalf in the American Revolution, and the alliance with France that made American independence possible...

At 14:30 on 9 February 1942, sparks from a welding torch used by Clement Derrick ignited a stack of life vests filled with flammable kapok that had been stored in the first-class lounge. The woodwork had not yet been removed, and the fire spread rapidly...

In one of the largest and most expensive salvage operations of its kind in history the ship was stripped of superstructure and righted on 7 August 1943. She was renamed Lafayette and reclassified as an aircraft and transport ferry, APV-4, on 15 September 1943 and placed in drydock the following month. Extensive damage to her hull, however, deterioration of her machinery, and the necessity for employing manpower on other more critical war projects prevented resumption of the conversion program, with the cost of restoring her determined to be too great, and her hulk remained in the Navy's custody through the cessation of hostilities with the Axis powers.

Lafayette was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 11 October 1945 without having ever sailed under the US flag. President Harry Truman authorized her disposal in an Executive Order on 8 September 1946, and she was sold as scrap on 3 October 1946...