The Maine Potato Incident

USS O’Bannon

USS O’Bannon (DD-450) Eye Witness Account — Ernie Herr

On 5 April 1943, DesRon 21 was returning from a night of shelling Japanese shore installations deep in the

New Georgia area of the Solomon Islands. Our destroyer, the O’Bannon, as part of this force, picked up a

radar contact that turned out to be a large Japanese submarine cruising on the surface and apparently

unaware of our presence. The Japanese lookouts undoubtedly were fast asleep.

We approached rapidly and were preparing to ram the sub. Our captain and other officers on the bridge were              trying to identify the type of sub and decided, at the last minute, that it could be a mine layer. Not wanting to                  blow up ourselves along with the sub, the decision was made that ramming was not a wise move. At the last             moment, the rudder was swung hard to avoid a collision and we found ourselves in a rather embarrassing situation           as we sailed along side of the Japanese submarine.

Plaque given to the O’Bannon

On board the sub, Japanese sailors, wearing dark shorts and dinky blue hats, were sleeping out on deck. In what could be considered a rude awaking, they sat up to see an American destroyer sailing along side. Our ship however, was far too close to permit our guns lowered enough to fire and since no one on deck carried a gun, not a shot was heard. Ditto on the Japanese sub, no one there had a gun either. In this situation, no one seemed sure of the proper course of action and it probably would not have been covered in the manual anyway. Therefore everyone just stared more or less spellbound.

The submarine was equipped with a 3-inch deck gun and the sub’s captain finally decided that now was probably a good time to make use of it. As the Japanese sailors ran toward their gun, our deck parties reached into storage bins that were located nearby, picked out some potatoes and threw them at the sailors on the deck of the sub. A potato battle ensued. Apparently the Japanese sailors thought the potatoes were hand grenades. This kept them very busy as they try to get rid of them by throwing them back at the O’Bannon or over the side of the sub. Thus occupied, they were too busy to man their deck gun which gave us sufficient time to put a little distance between our ship and the sub.

Finally we were far enough away to bring our guns to bear and firing commenced. One of our shells managed to hit the sub’s conning tower but the sub managed to submerge anyway. At that time our ship was able to pass directly over the sub for a depth charge attack. Later information showed that the sub did sink. When the Association of Potato Growers of Maine heard of this strange episode, they sent a plaque to commemorate the event. The plaque was mounted in an appropriate place near the crews mess hall for the crew to see. Well, it was the crew’s battle.

The story was picked up by the papers back in the States and, shortly thereafter, a full blown account of the event was covered by a story in the READERS DIGEST. Conversations with a crew member that served years later revealed that, while the plaque was still located in the crew’s mess hall, no one seemed to pay much attention to it nor knew much about it. I guess the crew was interested in making history but not particularly interested studying it.

This story was taken from The Destroyer History Foundation.

Click on images to enlarge and read.

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Military Humor – 

“I have to hold on a moment. I need to get rid of my sea legs.”

“I really need to update my black book better after each voyage.”

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Farewell Salutes – 

Robert Blagrove – NZ; NZ Army, WWII, 34th BattalionGeorge Cassman – Warsaw, MO; US Navy, WWII, KOrea & Vietnam, Chief Petty Off.

Kate (Golden) Dedick – Rumson, NJ; US Army Nursing Corps, WWII, ETO, 4th Aux. Surgical Grp., Bronze Star

Elmer Du Bose – Montgomery, AL; US Army Air Corps/A.F. (Ret. 28 yrs), WWII, Korea & Vietnam, Chief MSgt.

Thomas Emery – Poway, CA; US Army Air Corps, WWII, PTO, 11th Airborne

Calvin Ernst – Lexington, KY; US Army, Vietnam, MASH unit

John Murdock – Norton, MA; US Army Air Corps, WWII, PTO, 675th Artillery

Pat Murphy – W.AUS; RA Army, WWII

George Schweitzer – Boston, MA; US Navy, WWII

Peter Tantillo – Tappan, NY; US Army Air Corps, WWII, PTO, 187th Reg/11th A/B

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