Chapman’s next move, before he even began to plan for the final Neptune mission, was to set up his escape routes with the appropriate back-ups. Detailed instructions came to the post office box from Father O’Brien and he made sure there always was fall back position. In theory only the Castle knew the location of his loft and his ‘Chapman’ identity but he assumed that lateral interference from either SIM or OVRA remained a possibility. He therefore needed a completely secure safe house and an emergency identity unknown to anyone. The first order of business was to secure a new identity and avoid any foreign sounding names and exotic locations. He managed to make an acceptable copy of his Vincent Chapman New York driver’s license changing the name to read Mark Gorman with an address at 23 Chestnut Street in Rye, NY. Once he was satisfied with his false driver’s license he rented an artist’s studio that was more of a cold water flat at 103rd Street and Lexington Avenue near the subway stop. The landlord asked no questions and showed no interest in seeing identification, overjoyed as he was to grab the three months’ rent paid up in advance and barely noting the name of Mark Altman on a slip of paper. The newly minted painter moved in that evening with two suitcases and the some messy artist’s materials. His fallback safe house at 155 East 103rd Street was to be used only in dire situations.
He then began scouting the area along the West Side piers from lower Manhattan all the way up to West 79th Street and Riverside Park weaving in and out of the avenues and side streets. He followed the customary procedures to make sure he wasn’t being followed. It quickly became obvious, as he came closer to the French Line’s Pier 88 where the Normandie was moored at 48th Street, that the approaches on land were much too heavily guarded by a Negro army unit in full combat gear. The closest he could get was the corner of West 48th Street and 12th Avenue where the roadblocks and barriers surrounding the gangplank were visible several blocks from the pier. He immediately signaled Father O’Brien that it was impossible to board the ship without elaborate cover and the cooperation of many dubious individuals who were probably FBI or Naval agents Any penetration of the ship’s hold from the inside was therefore to be considered out of the question. The attack had to come from the water, at night, using minimal equipment.
By late January 1942 more stringent wartime security measures were being slowly introduced although most of them didn’t go beyond what had been done during the First World War and consisted in closing access to New York harbor at the Narrows with heavy antisubmarine nets; increased harbor patrols; and heavy naval and Coast Guard surveillance on land and at sea. Still, there were no blackouts, curfews or regular roadblocks, an astounding situation for a nation that had just been the victim of a surprise attack and drawn into a world war. Chapman walked north of Pier 88 and concluded that the ideal spot to slip into the water with his mines was at the 79th Street boat basin. The area close to the George Washington Bridge was not being patrolled as intensely by Coast Guard or Harbor Patrol speedboats that were concentrating instead on the southern docks and the central part of the harbor. Motorboats would occasionally speed downstream on the Hudson and East Rivers mostly heading south to lower Manhattan.
The boat basin was therefore the best entry point. It would require a long grueling underwater approach to the target mostly under or around the piers over a two-mile stretch. Upon completion he would have to hide the oxygen tank in the fishing boat and leave the area as quickly as possible. For several days Fred walked slowly up and down the area around 79th Street examining each ship and pontoon dock. New anti-sabotage measures were being announced daily by Civil Defense and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s office but those press releases were mostly for show and wouldn’t hamper the operation in any way.
In late January through agent ALFIO Chapman obtained a temporary permit to moor the Fitz-Greene at the 79th Street Boat Basin a few days before the attack. The plan was beginning to take shape and he continued to survey the area discreetly every day late at night and during the early morning hours.