How to make Ice Cream in World War II

Day 292 / 365

World War II saw many new young recruits who had to fly away to a foreign land far from home. To get supplies back from home, parts would have to be flown in or sailed across the ocean. So people had to be innovative.

J. Hunter Reinberg was with some young pilots bombing Japanese held islands. To boost the morale of his crew, he thought he would treat them with some ice cream. Now getting ice cream was not so easy, he would have to file paperwork, pull a lot of strings and get an icebox to transport it. So he came up with the novel idea of making ice cream himself, in the hot and humid tropical island without a freezer!

Here’s how he did it. He put a water-proof container at the bottom of his plane and filled it with milk and cocoa powder. The plan was simple, fly to a height of 25000 ft where the temperature will be freezing, and then come down quickly with gallons of chocolate ice cream.

He didn’t get it right the first two times and ended with some cold chocolate milk. But his crew members made some modifications to the tank to allow the ice-cream to freeze and they succeded on the third flight.

The pilots were required to log each and every flight they made, and they couldn’t just tell their commander that they were flying to make some ice cream. So they disguised the flights as test flights.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — How nature can help you be productive