Welcome back to another installment of the Watercooler, RedState’s daily Open Thread! Today, we’ve got one of the weirder stories (and recipes) of WWII.

Recipe for Ice Cream, South Pacific Style

In late 1944, the South Pacific had become a backwater theater, limited action for the Marine fighter pilots based at Peleliu other than strafing and dive-bombing Japanese facilities on bypassed Palau. There wasn’t much to keep morale up, not even ice-cream, so the intrepid Devil Dogs of VMF-122 found a new use for their Corsairs.

Ingredients

• One F4U fighter-bomber
• Five standard .50-caliber ammo cans, cleaned
• Ten gallons canned milk
• Cocoa powder

Procedure

1. Remove maintenance panels from wing undersides. Bolt ammo cans to panels and reinstall.
2. Mix canned milk and cocoa powder. Fill ammo cans with mixture.
3. Take off. Climb to 30,000 feet or higher altitude, chill for 35 minutes.
4. Land and serve.

Yield: Ten gallons. Serves 100. Note: Ice cream may be flaky, if needed modify ammo cans with screws driven by bomb-fuse safety propellers.

Sounds crazy, but it really happened! Check out Zach Rosenberg’s writeup in Air & Space/Smithsonian Magazine; hat tip to old friend Sam Kersh for forwarding this story.

This Week In History

• Sunday, 12/2: Monroe Doctrine declared, 1823; John Brown hanged, 1859; Enron bankruptcy, 2001
• Monday, 12/3: Washington reaches banks of the Delaware, 1776; Illinois statehood, 1818; first human heart transplant, 1967
• Tuesday, 12/4: Washington’s cousin dupes Tories, 1780; Grange founded, 1867; “Million Dollar Quartet” at Memphis’s Sun Studios, 1956
• Wednesday, 12/5: Prohibition ends, 1933; USS Lexington sails for Midway, 1941; Flight 19 vanishes, 1945
• Thursday, 12/6: Congress moves from NYC to Philadelphia, 1790; Washington Monument completed, 1884; USS Jacob Jones first American destroyer sunk in action, 1917
• Friday, 12/7: Lafayette joins Continental Army, 1776; Jesse James’s first heist, 1869; Day of Infamy, 1941
• Saturday, 12/8: Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony premieres, 1813; Brookings think-tank founded, 1927; INF treaty signed, 1987

Today’s Birthdays: President Martin Van Buren, 1782; General George Custer, 1839; copper king Marcus Daly, 1841; entertainment magnate Walt Disney, 1901.

Holidays Around the World: It’s St. Nicholas’s Eve in much of Europe, Discovery Day in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and Children’s Day in Suriname.

This Week In History is compiled with assistance from History.com and Wikipedia. Something interesting not listed here? Please share in the Comments section–this is an Audience Participation Encouraged featurette.

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Quote of the Day

Beware of the man who won’t be bothered with details.–William Feather

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