She made use of bad weather and high speed to avoid Royal Navy cruisers, arriving in Murmansk on 6 September 1939. With the outbreak of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, on 10 December 1939 Bremen made a dash to Bremerhaven, arriving on 13 December. On the way she was sighted and challenged by the S-class submarine . While challenging Bremen, an escorting Dornier Do 18 seaplane forced Salmon to dive for safety. After diving, Salmons commander, Lieutenant Commander E. O. Bickford, decided not to torpedo the liner because he believed she was not a legal target. His decision not to fire on Bremen likely delayed the start of unrestricted submarine warfare. Bremen was used as a barracks ship; there were plans to use her as a transport in Operation Sea Lion, the intended invasion of Great Britain. On 16 March 1941, Bremen was set alight by 15-year-old crew member Walter Schmidt while at her dock in Bremerhaven and completely gutted. A lengthy investigation discovered that the arson was the result of a personal grudge against one of the ship's officers, and was not an act of war. Schmidt was later guillotined for the arson, becoming one of the youngest people to be judicially executed by the regime. Starting in 1942 she was dismantled to the waterline so the steel could be used for munitions. In 1946 her remains were towed up the River Weser, beached on a sandbar off Blexen, Nordenham and destroyed by explosives, though some parts of the double hull remain visible to this day. Legacy In 2004, a stamp was issued showing Bremen before the Manhattan skyline. In 2003, Radio Bremen produced a one-hour radio feature, Königin der Meere – Die Geschichte des Schnelldampfers "Bremen" (Queen of the Seas - The story of the rapid steamer "Bremen") by Detlef Michelers and other former sailors on Bremen. In the stairwell in the Übersee Museum Bremen, there is a 1:100 scale model of Bremen, while in the shipping exhibit there is a model of her significantly smaller earlier namesake to the same scale. A much larger, 39-foot long model of the Bremen, known officially as Bremen IV, Junior was built between 1949 and 1962 by enthusiasts Günter Bos and Günter Buse. The 10-ton model, operated by a two-person crew inside, would tour the world, and achieve a Guinness World Record for largest seaworthy model ship.