Blame for the Normandie

AND CIVILIAN DEFENSE

Blame for the humiliating and shameful disaster to the liner Normandie (renamed by the Navy the Lafayette) landed on the U.S. Navy with a thud last week. A House investigating committee declared: "The line of demarcation of the responsibility ...was much confused. ..." But the committee's outraged report put the blame on "Government representatives."

Background to Disaster was laid in December, when the Navy Department "accepted the vessel and 'full responsibility' therefor." Few steps to safeguard the

$60,000,000 liner were taken. Coast Guards put aboard became only casually familiar with her intricate machinery. Only three or four of her fire extinguishers were examined. Expert estimate: probably only about 50% were in good condition; faulty equipment was not replaced. Robins Dry Dock & Repair Co., subsidiary of Todd Shipyards Corp., which had the contract to convert her into a naval auxiliary vessel, took inadequate precautions against fire. Authority was undefined. Although the committee found no evidence of sabotage, opportunities for it were "abundant." Background to Chaos was laid when Washington ordered the Normandie made ready to sail for Boston on Feb. 14. Workers protested that it would take much longer. Washington insisted. For weeks rush orders, counter-rush orders kept contractors and subcontractors in a whirl.

Plans were made, altered, restored. Work men were hired, laid off, hired again. Official wrangling over the sailing date was cut short only on the afternoon of Feb. 9, when sparks from an acetylene torch ignited kapok life preservers piled carelessly near by in the ship's grand salon, sent fire roaring through her topsides.

Swarming over the ship that afternoon were Coast Guards, many of them raw recruits; 500 men of the prospective crew, unfamiliar with the ship, 1,750 employes of Robins, "of whom 50 were untrained men designated as 'fire watchers'"; 675 employes of subcontractors, all under various straw bosses, foremen, superintendents, officers. No one was in over-all command.

Nightmare. The story of the fire sounded like a carefully told bad dream. Hoses spewed weakly and went dry. Fire extinguishers failed. Someone tripped over and spilled a precious bucket of water. The man at the central fire-control station telephoned the bridge to sound a general alarm-the Coast Guardsman on duty there could not find the right switch (there were two switches but both had been disconnected). Donning gas masks, men tried to get into the smoke-filled salon, discovered that the gas masks did not work, retreated, gasping for air. An officer found some hose, frantically tried to hook it on to a valve, failed because the valve was a French type and the hose had a U.S.-type fitting. He found another hose already hooked up-no nozzle. The ship's power failed. The ship's water pumps and hoses quit.

Twelve hours later, her fire quenched by New York's fire department, topheavy with thousands of tons of water, the Normandie capsized.

Said the Congressional committee dryly, on the testimony of over 350 witnesses: "It is difficult to imagine a more confused state of affairs. . . ."

Who-Me? The most serious confusion was among high-ranking officers in the pier shed: handsome, urbane Rear Admiral Adolphus Andrews, Commandant of the District (since transferred to command of the Eastern Sea Frontier), the captain of the port, Coast Guard officers, the district material officer. Said the report: "The Commandant did not consider himself either in charge ... or to be the responsible naval officer present. He considered the Normandie to be under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Ships and of the district material officer. . . . He considered the fire department to be in charge of the fire." He considered himself merely an adviser. The district material officer "considered himself also to be acting in an advisory capacity." The Coast Guard "looked to orders from the captain of the port," [who] "considered the Commandant in command."

Blame for the disaster was laid by the committee on carelessness, negligence, indecision, lack of coordination, divided authority. Said the report in its conclusions: "There was much talk of the responsibility of the contractor under his contract.

That is a contractual responsibility within the proper jurisdiction of the courts; but there was a higher responsibility to the nation at large. . . .

"The protection of Government property should always remain in the hands of Government representatives, and no Government representative should feel that he is absolved from the duty of full and entire protection of Government property."

The committee could not quite bring itself to say the words, but the inference was there to read: blame for the shameful disaster to the $60,000.000 Normandie, which still lay like a carcass in the dirty Hudson River, belonged to the U.S. Navy.

But no sooner was the committee indictment out than the Navy chuffed up with its own report. "Direct and sole" cause of the fire, a Navy Court of Inquiry solemnly ruled, was "gross carelessness and utter violation of rules of common sense" by Robins Dry Dock employes. Full responsibility, the Navy grumped, belonged there. Recommendation: to sue Robins for damages to the full extent of liability.

The Navy Court allowed that if any possible blame could possibly be put on Navy men, it belonged, not to brass hats, but to two men far down the line-two lieutenant commanders upon whom Secretary Knox, in an accompanying letter, turned his sternest glare.

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