It is said that an army marches on its stomach, and that old adage definitely rings true for the navy, as it has been proven time and again throughout history that a well-fed sailor is a happy seaman.
On this point, there has been an oft-quoted anecdote that the crew of an American submarine brought out the pirate in them and went on board a battleship in World War 2 with the express mission to steal an ice-cream-making machine – something they succeeded spectacularly at.
Is there any truth to this?
VERDICT:
TRUE
Yes, this really happened when the US Navy submarine USS Tang was docked in San Francisco at the same time the battleship USS Tennessee was also in port.
As explained in the Unauthorized History of the Pacific War Podcast by The National WWII Museum staff historian Seth Paridon, ice cream machines were generally only carried by ships like battleships, aircraft carriers, and heavy cruisers with one or more ice cream machines on board.
Paridon then said that the Tang's skipper - then-Lieutenant Commander Richard O'Kane – gave an order to the sub's Chief of the Boat, William F. Ballinger, to “go find me an ice-cream maker, by hook or by crook and get it installed aboard this submarine.”
“Ballinger went and 'liberated' the ice cream maker aboard the battleship Tennessee that was tied up in San Francisco at that time, and literally just a couple of hours after Tang had shoved off, the shore patrol showed up looking for their ice cream maker that was now aboard a submarine,” he said.
“You got to wonder how he got it off of there, but it is a pretty interesting story,” added Paridon.
It's not exactly said how long the machine worked for when it was on the Tang, but it must've been a real sweet time for however long it functioned!
And no, it didn't impede the careers of the crew of USS Tang that survived World War Two; O'Kane retired from the navy in the 1950s as a Rear Admiral, having won the Medal of Honor for the most successful record of an American submarine commander. This record remains unbroken to today.
When CDR Dick O'Kane of USS Tang (SS-306) learned that the officers' wardroom on the battleship USS Tennessee (BB-43) was getting an ice cream maker, he nabbed the machine and had it installed on his sub to boost the crew's morale. #SubSunday pic.twitter.com/2EDphKC6Za
— U.S. Naval Institute (@NavalInstitute) March 5, 2023
SOURCES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://twitter.com/
