liner out as a floating prisoner of war camp, "with festoons of barbed wire sprouting from her decks and disfiguring her graceful lines" as the ship was prepared for the task of bringing POWs back from north Africa. In October, 1942, Île de France was spotted off Port Elizabeth, by aircraft of the South African Air Force. While in the city she was converted into a troopship. The extensive alterations, the largest ever undertaken in the harbour, was completed in 1943. Post-war career and demise In autumn 1945, Île de France was returned to the CGT after five years of military service with the British Admiralty. In honour of its wartime performance, the Southern Railway company named one of its locomotives French Line CGT. At first Île de France was used to ferry American and Canadian troops home. Then in April 1947, the ship returned to its builder's yard at Saint Nazaire for a two-year restoration. The outcome included the removal of its third "dummy" funnel and an upturn of the straight black hull to meet its upper forepeak, in keeping with the new style of the CGT's ships beginning with Normandie in 1935. These changes increased Ile de France'''s gross tonnage to 44,356. She travelled to New York on her first postwar luxury crossing in July 1949. Île de France proved to be just as popular as before the war. In 1950 the ship received a new running mate, Liberté, the former German Blue Riband-holder . In 1949 Île de France was the setting for part of the first act of the Jules Styne Broadway musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes starring Carol Channing. On September 21, 1953, the ship rescued 25 of the 26 man crew off the Liberian freighter Greenville which was damaged and later sank in an Atlantic tropical storm. On July 26, 1956, Île de France had a major role in the rescue operation after the collision of the passenger liners and off Nantucket. Of 1,706 passengers and crew of the Andrea Doria, approximately 753 were transferred to the Île de France during the approximately 6-hour rescue operation. With the development of jet transport, and the decline of ocean travel, the CGT wished to dispose of the ship quietly. In November 1958 she departed New York for the last time and, in 1959 was sold to a Japanese breaker and departed Le Havre on February 26. She