The Warship That Fought Back With Vegetables

In April 1943, the USS O'Bannon, a Fletcher-class destroyer, stumbled onto a surfaced Japanese submarine in the dark waters of the Solomon Islands. The two vessels drifted so close together that a collision felt more likely than a gunfight, and neither crew seemed fully prepared for what came next.

The O'Bannon's massive deck guns, built for long-range combat, physically could not angle down far enough to hit a target that close. The crew suddenly found themselves dangerously undergunned against an enemy submarine just yards away.

Worse, the sailors feared the submarine crew would reach their own deck gun first and open fire before the Americans could respond. With no handheld weapons readily available, panic started to set in fast among the men standing exposed on deck.

That's when someone spotted the storage bins. Sitting right there, completely unglamorous and entirely unexpected, was a stockpile of raw potatoes meant for the ship's galley, not for combat.

The sailors began hurling the potatoes at the Japanese crew with everything they had. In the pitch darkness, the flying vegetables were impossible to identify on sight, and confusion spread instantly across the submarine's deck.

The Japanese sailors mistook the potatoes for live hand grenades and scrambled to kick them overboard instead of grabbing their weapons. That brief, frantic distraction gave the O'Bannon exactly the window it needed to reverse and reposition.

Once clear, the destroyer's heavy guns finally had the angle they needed, and the submarine was sunk. The Association of Potato Growers later honored the ship with a commemorative plaque celebrating the vegetable that may have changed the outcome of the encounter.