desperate times

Mike Mehal­lo (1923–2006). My dad, the dec­o­rat­ed WWII vet­er­an.
Also, the guy who once tried to sink a Ger­man sub­ma­rine with a pota­to.

North At­lantic, mer­chant ship con­voy with Navy es­corts.
Ra­dio si­lence. A periscope ap­pears in the wa­ter next to the ship. Ob­vi­ous­ly a Ger­man sub, close quar­ters. Too close to fire a tor­pe­do.

And be­cause it was a sup­ply ship: No weapons on board, just a few tons of pota­toes.

My dad’s plan: Try to hit the periscope with a pota­to, break the mir­ror, blind the U‑boat, force it to sur­face. Then maybe one of the Navy ships can take a shot at it.

Seemed like a good idea – things like that al­ways worked in the movies – and they didn’t have much else to do any­way.

War in­volves a lot of just sit­ting around, wait­ing for hell to break loose. But pret­ty much, it is A LOT of sit­ting around.

So,
the crew un­loaded on the periscope with every sin­gle pota­to on board.

The periscope just fol­lowed along. No one hit the mark.

Even­tu­al­ly, the sub sim­ply left the con­voy.

But word got out that there was some crazy nav­i­ga­tor on a mer­chant ship hell bent on try­ing to sink a Ger­man sub with a pota­to. Said he heard about it for pret­ty much the rest of the war.

Pota­to guy.

Pota­to guy who got every­one on board to throw their en­tire haul of pota­toes into the At­lantic Ocean.

He said it would have all been worth it if he could just have seen the looks on the faces of the Ger­man crew as the bar­rage of pota­toes flew at them.

                                                                     Ex­trem­is  malis  ex­trema  re­me­dia
                                              [des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures]
 

                       Hug a vet­er­an to­day.
Maybe they have a pota­to sto­ry too.
 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Im­age sources: Wikipedia and WW2Today.

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