How a Few Potatoes Sank the Japanese Submarine — When Nothing Else Could

How a Handful of Potatoes Stopped a Japanese Submarine When Steel and Fire Couldn’t

At 2:18 a.m., the Pacific Ocean was black and silent.

Commander Donald Macdonald stood inside the USS O’Bannon, staring at a single glowing dot on the radar screen. Forty miles off the Russell Islands, something was moving slowly across the water—eight knots, surfaced, unafraid. For most sailors, it was just another contact. For Macdonald, it was a nightmare made real.

Japanese submarines had been slaughtering American destroyers for months.

Four destroyers gone. Over a thousand sailors dead. Each attack followed the same pattern: darkness, silence, then torpedoes ripping steel apart from below. Destroyers hunted submarines—but submarines killed destroyers.

And now, one was right in front of him.

Macdonald ordered flank speed. The O’Bannon surged forward, slicing through the night at 35 knots. The range closed fast. Eight thousand yards. Six thousand. Four thousand. Still, the submarine didn’t dive.

At a thousand yards, the lookouts confirmed it.

A Japanese submarine—RO-class. Sixty-six men aboard. Torpedoes loaded. Deck gun ready.

Macdonald made a snap decision.

“Ram her.”

The bow wave rose like a wall of white water. At five hundred yards, a voice shouted from the bridge.

“What if she’s a mine layer?”

The thought froze him. Some Japanese submarines carried mines. Hitting one at full speed wouldn’t sink the destroyer—it would erase it. Two hundred eighty-eight American sailors would vanish in a single flash.

“Hard left rudder!” Macdonald yelled.

The ship groaned and heeled violently. Instead of ramming, the O’Bannon slid alongside the submarine—so close the crews could see each other’s faces.

Seventy yards.

Too close.

The destroyer’s five-inch guns couldn’t depress low enough to fire. The anti-aircraft guns weren’t manned. And on the submarine’s deck, Japanese sailors—barefoot, half-awake—were scrambling toward their deck gun.

If they reached it, they would fire point-blank into the O’Bannon’s hull.

One shell. That was all it would take.

On the American deck, sailors grabbed anything they could—wrenches, mugs, tools—desperate, useless objects against steel and gunpowder.

Then someone opened a storage locker.

Inside were sacks of potatoes.

Nobody remembers who had the idea first. Maybe it was desperation. Maybe instinct. Maybe madness.

Seaman First Class Ambrose Harden grabbed one.

Round. Brown. Heavy.

He threw it.

The potato struck a Japanese sailor in the shoulder and rolled across the submarine’s deck. The sailor froze. He stared at it. Then he dove for cover.

Another potato flew.

Then another.

Within seconds, American sailors were hurling potatoes as fast as they could grab them. They thudded against steel. Bounced. Rolled. Stopped.

The Japanese sailors panicked.

In the darkness, at seventy yards, a potato looked exactly like a grenade.

Round. Heavy. Silent.

Japanese sailors screamed warnings. They grabbed the “grenades” and hurled them overboard. Some threw them back at the Americans. None of them reached the deck gun.

For half a minute, the most decorated destroyer in the Pacific fought a submarine with vegetables.

Macdonald didn’t waste the miracle.

“Engines ahead full!”

The O’Bannon clawed forward. The gap widened. One hundred yards. One hundred fifty.

At two hundred yards, Macdonald shouted, “Cease potato fire.”

The five-inch guns finally lowered.

“Commence firing.”

The first shell hit the conning tower dead-on. Steel tore open like paper. Another shell obliterated the deck gun before it ever fired a shot. Flames erupted. The submarine shuddered.

The Japanese captain ordered a crash dive.

The submarine slipped beneath the waves—but she was wounded. Oil bubbled to the surface.

“Depth charges,” Macdonald ordered.

Three charges rolled into the sea.

The ocean exploded.

White columns of water towered into the night. The shockwave rattled every rivet on the O’Bannon. When the water settled, oil and debris spread across the surface.

No survivors.

But no certainty.

Macdonald filed his report. “Submarine damaged or sunk.” He didn’t mention potatoes. How could he?

Two days later, another destroyer found the truth.

USS Strong detected a crippled submarine limping on the surface—trailing oil, barely moving. Same class. Same damage.

It was RO-34.

This time, there were no potatoes.

Five-inch guns tore her apart. The submarine sank with all sixty-six men aboard.

The war moved on.

But the story didn’t.

Sailors wrote letters home. Someone mentioned potatoes. Newspapers picked it up. Headlines grew. Details stretched. Soon, America believed a submarine had been sunk with vegetables.

The Maine Potato Growers Association sent a brass plaque praising the O’Bannon for “sinking a Japanese submarine with potatoes.”

The crew mounted it in the mess hall.

Commander Macdonald hated it.

He spent forty years telling the truth: the potatoes didn’t sink the submarine. They bought thirty seconds. Thirty seconds that saved his ship and his men.

Nobody listened.

The legend was better.

The O’Bannon fought on—Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, Okinawa. Seventeen battle stars. More than any destroyer in the Pacific. She shot down aircraft, sank ships, survived kamikazes.

None of that made headlines.

Potatoes did.

When Macdonald died, his obituary mentioned them.

Not the battles. Not the medals. Not the lives saved.

Just potatoes.

But the truth remains.

In a war of steel and fire, when guns failed and death was seconds away, a handful of sailors used what they had—food meant to keep them alive—and turned it into the strangest weapon of World War II.

Not because it was funny.

But because it worked.

And because, sometimes, survival belongs not to the strongest weapon—but to the fastest mind in the darkest moment.