Ice cream barge

This was a towed vessel employed by the United States Navy (USN) in the Pacific theater of World War II to store frozen and refrigerated foodstuffs.

During World War II, the demand for this comfort food was further highlighted by an incident in 1942 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lexington.

After the ship was struck by a Japanese torpedo and began to sink, sailors abandoned ship—but not before raiding the freezers for containers of ice cream.

Stationed in the Western Pacific, the barge supplied ice cream to smaller ships, such as destroyers, that lacked onboard production capabilities.

While practical limitations hindered its operation—such as its lack of propulsion, requiring it to be towed by tugboats—the ice cream barge was immensely popular among sailors.