Speed Graphic Film and Video | SS Normandie / USS Lafayette fire, February 9, 1942 @SpeedGraphicFilmVideo | Uploaded August 2020 | Updated October 2024, 5 hours ago.
I recently came across film of the SS Normandie fire taken by the Office of War Information (OWI) that I hadn't seen anywhere before. There are other films of the event, most notably the Stillman Collection film, but this is the first time I've seen the OWI film. I've included a newsreel clip as prologue to the OWI footage.

The Normandie, the most spectacular Atlantic liner ever built, had a brief career. Its maiden voyage was in 1935 and its last transatlantic crossing was in August 1939. Held in New York for two years, she was seized by the United States to be used as a troop transport. During her hasty and ill-managed conversion, a welder's torch set fire to a stack of life preservers. The fire quickly spread throughout the ship, its state-of-the-art fire-suppression systems inoperative. The water being poured into the ship caused it to roll on its side, where it sat for over a year.
Rather than scrap it in place, a complex and expensive operation to re-right the ship was undertaken in 1943. The superstructure was stripped away and pumps were deployed to empty the ship of water. But the hull was of no use and sat out the rest of the war. It was sold for scrap in 1946.