Ice Cream Barge

[patrynius]

[Split from "Little known facts about equipment..."]

The most unusual ship of the Second World War, was an American Ice Cream Barge. Constructed of concrete, the ship´s only responsibility was to produce ice cream for US sailors in the South Pacific during the war.
The crew made about 5,000+ gallons of Ice Cream every Hour! Cool

Max, have you got any more informations about that ships couse that really...strange
link maybe or so
regards

[Nebfer]

I can see it now... a young grand kid asks his granpa what he did during ww2... I made Ice Cream...

[Marcus Wendel]

Some additional information on this topic:

Concrete barges also served in the Pacific during 1944 and 1945.[12] From the Charleroi, Pennsylvania, Mail, February 5, 1945:

Largest unit of the Army's fleet is a BRL, (Barge, Refrigerated, Large) which is going to the South Pacific to serve fresh frozen foods – even ice cream – to troops weary of dry rations. The vessel can keep 64 carloads of frozen meats and 500 tons of fresh produce indefinitely at 12F. Equipment on board includes an ice machine of five-ton daily capacity and a freezer that turns out more than a gallon of ice cream a minute. Three of the floating warehouses, designed for tropical warfare, have been built of concrete at National City, Calif., and cost $1,120,000 each. In the crew of the 265-ft. barges are 23 Army men.

The United States Navy is equip
ping a floating ice cream parlour
for the Pacific. A special barge
is being built at the cost of
£312.500 just to service ships too
small to carry their own ice cream
making equipment.
The barge will be able to make
10 gallons of ice cream every seven
minutes, arid has storage capacity
of 2000 gallons.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/50259032

The Pittsburgh Press on July 22 1945 had an article about it http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1 ... 51,4820892

/Marcus

[Marcus Wendel]

A nice illustration.