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lastgunfighterballad

France is lovely and the wine has made my head floopy.

lastgunfighterballad

1 day later and I am in exactly the same position. Damn France and their good wine.

i barely ever drink and then france is like yo have this holidayyyy

theadventurer

life:
“A couple relaxing on the banks of the Seine River in Paris, France - during the spring of 1949. (Nat Farbman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) #Paris #France #TBT
”

Source: life history

john-paul-jonesing-for-liberty

lex-for-lexington

Before you ask, the two pictures above are related. Confused? Don’t worry, I’ll explain it.

USS O’Bannon and the Potato Incident of 1943

“The history of the Pacific War can never be written without telling the story of the USS O’Bannon,” Admiral William F. Halsey wrote. Well, I must say that the history of USS O’Bannon can never be written without telling the story of the Potato Incident. Now get ready for a story that is going to involve a destroyer, a submarine, a smart crew and a lot of potatoes.

Early 5 April, 1943. Off the Russell Islands, in the Solomons.

Destroyer Squadron 21 was returning after a night of shelling Japanese positions in the New Georgia area, in the Solomons. Destroyer USS O’Bannon, main character of this short little story, picked up a radar contact that turned out to be Japanese submarine Ro-34. The submarine was on the surface, not expecting a squadron of destroyers to be nearby.

The commanding officer, Commander George Philip Jr., ordered the tin can to approach and ram the submarine. At the last minute, the officers on the bridge could not identify the submarine and decided that it might be a mine layer. Not wise ramming a mine layer and sinking your ship in the process, right? To avoid the unwanted collision, O’Bannon made a hard turn - and that put her alongside the submarine, “in a rather embarrassing situation”, as crewman Ernest A. Herr put it.

No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy. But, what if your ship is so close to the enemy, that your guns can’t even depress low enough to fire?

Nobody on deck carried a gun. The Americans didn’t, the Japanese didn’t. As the Japanese sailors rushed towards their submarine’s 3-inch deck gun, sailors on the deck of O’Bannon had to do something - but what?

From the storage bins on deck, the sailors picked up potatoes and threw them at the Japanese submarine. Yes, potatoes. As Ernest A. Herr remarked, “A potato battle ensued.”

Ernest A. Herr made the guess that the Japanese sailors probably thought that those were grenades instead of potatoes - the truth we will never know. But what we do know is that the submarine crewmen were too busy picking up potatoes and throwing them into the ocean that they didn’t man their deck gun.

This gave O’Bannon enough time to pull away from Ro-34. Once O’Bannon was far away enough to fire at the submarine, firing commenced, and one shell hit the submarine’s conning tower. The submarine managed to submerge; O’Bannon passed over the submarine and performed a depth charge attack. Japanese records showed that the submarine did sink.

When the Association of Potato Growers of Maine heard of this strange “Potato Incident”, they sent a plaque to the crew of USS O’Bannon to commemorate the event. And, of course, it was mounted on a wall next to the crews mess hall.

Source:
Destroyer History Foundation
“The Maine Potato Episode” by Ernest A. Herr