The Battle That Was Won by a Bag of Potatoes

This is the story of how a vegetable became a weapon of mass confusion in the middle of the Pacific War.

It’s 1943. The USS O’Bannon, a U.S. Navy destroyer, is face-to-face with a surfaced Japanese submarine. The sub is too close. The destroyer's main guns can't depress low enough to fire on it. The deck guns are empty. They are, for a terrifying moment, completely defenseless.

Then, a sailor has the most absurd, brilliant idea in naval history.

"Throw the potatoes!"

The crew, who happened to have a large stash of potatoes on deck for the galley, began a frantic, all-hands barrage—not with shells, but with raw, Idaho-grown spuds.

To the Japanese sailors on the sub's conning tower, the hail of unfamiliar, pale objects in the chaos of battle looked exactly like one thing: hand grenades.

In a panic, the submarine crew scrambled below deck and crash-dived, fleeing the unexpected tuber assault. The O’Bannon escaped, unharmed.

Let that sink in. In the mechanized, industrial horror of WWII, a critical naval engagement was decided not by firepower, but by psychological warfare waged with a root vegetable.

It’s the ultimate proof that in the fog of war, the most powerful weapon can sometimes be a perfectly executed bluff… and a well-stocked pantry. The spud, it turns out, was mightier than the sword.