On February 11, 1942, not long after the United States entered World War II, the night skies over New York’s Hudson River piers turned crimson in a spectacular fire. Ablaze was the former French liner Normandie, renamed the Lafayette, which was being converted to a troop carrier. It would have made a most efficient troopship since its high speed would have made it an extremely difficult target for German wolfpack submarines then decimating Atlantic shipping.
The fire gutted the Normandie. Flames burned fiercely all over the ship, and it was clearly arson. Officially, the government inferred it was not sure what had happened. It might have been Nazi sabotage or it might simply have been due to worker carelessness. At U.S. Navy headquarters in Washington, “carelessness” was not taken seriously; that possibility had been raised simply to prevent civilian panic. But what had happened to the Normandie?
The truth was not revealed for almost three decades until the posthumous memoirs of Lucky Luciano explained that the ship had been sabotaged by the Mafia. That explanation was later confirmed by the usually tight-lipped Meyer Lansky who, still later, revealed the same basic facts to his Israeli biographers.
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It was the Mafia that struck the match to the Normandie. The purpose was to light a fire under the military authorities so that they could be panicked into enlisting the imprisoned Lucky Luciano into efforts to stop sabotage on the docks. Even before the Normandie fire, naval intelligence was convinced that German- or Italian-speaking dock workers were signaling information to off-shore enemy subs. It was clear to these intelligence operatives that they did not have the power to prevent this and neither did the New York police. The only force capable of doing so was the underworld.
The first man to see the opening this gave the Mafia was Albert Anastasia, a longtime Luciano loyalist. Albert conferred with his brother, Tough Tony Anastasio, who then took a plan to Frank Costello, acting head of Luciano’s crime family. Costello journeyed to Dannemora Prison to present the idea of burning the Normandie to Luciano who saw it would give him tremendous leverage with the government. Officials would have to deal with him to keep the docks safe.
With a nod from Luciano, the Normandie burned. Later, Luciano would gloat: “That god-damn Anastasia— he really done a job. Later on, Albert told me not to feel too bad about what happened to the ship. He said that as a sergeant in the Army he hated the fuckin’ Navy anyway.”
The Normandie’s fate galvanized official Washington to action. Almost instantly an emergency plan called Operation Underworld came into being, calling for utilizing the Mafia to help the war effort. The Navy approached Joseph “Socks” Lanza, the racket boss of the Fulton Fish Market, with the idea. Lanza explained he was a small fish in the matter and passed the Navy on to Costello and Meyer Lansky. They let it be known that only Luciano could give the okay.
The mob had won their war. Officials fell all over themselves trying to please Charley Lucky. Costello said he was unhappy being in Dannemora, the “Siberia” of the New York penal system, and maybe he should be transferred to Sing Sing. Officials went one better and moved him to Great Meadow Prison, the most pleasant institution in the system.
Luciano passed the word that the mob had to do all possible on the docks to aid the war effort. Lansky personally lectured Anastasia, telling him that he and his brother mustn’t burn any more ships. “He was sorry,” Lansky recalled, “not sorry he’d had the Normandie burned but sorry he couldn’t get at the Navy again.”
From Great Meadow Luciano issued many orders, ostensibly concerning the war effort, but in conversations with Costello and Lansky he spent most of his time exerting active control once more over the national crime syndicate. And after the war of course Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who had put Luciano in prison for 30 to 50 years on a charge of compulsory prostitution, agreed to his release because of his patriotic services to the government.
