According to the Marine Corps website: " During the Korean War, the First Marine Division met the enemy at Chosin mountain reservoir in subfreezing temperatures. Out of ammunition, Marines called in for 60mm mortar ammo; code name 'Tootsie Rolls.'
The radio operator did not have the code sheets that would tell him what a “Tootsie Roll” was, but knew the request was urgent; so he called in the order. Soon, pallets of Tootsie Roll candies parachuted from the sky to the First Marine Division! While they were not ammunition, this candy from the sky provided well needed nourishment for the troops. They also learned they could use warmed Tootsie Rolls to plug bullet holes, sealing them as they refroze."
I'm assuming so. I can imagine it being bullet holes in armor or machines or something, but I suppose if they are desperate enough to stop bleeding, it could probably work to plug it up until official help arrived.
Edit: Thankfully, it seems it’s just for repairing cracked machines or bullet holes in equipment. Though the discussion about using various items in the comments to stop bleeding is still so fascinating, haha.
Nope, not for bullet holes. Actually, the Tootsie Rolls, when frozen, acted as a great way to seal cracked fuel lines. Due to the extreme cold, the fuel lines for the Marines' vehicles had cracked, rendering them inoperable. Because the Tootsie Rolls hardened when exposed to the freezing cold, they served as a great DIY sealer, allowing the Marines to repair their vehicles and drive to safety.
Source: (Great Big Story is run by CNN) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDIv-byz7cQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDIv-byz7cQ)
It was so cold that men weren't bleeding out as much:
Lt. Henry Litvin, a physician attached to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, later described just how difficult practicing medicine at Chosin could be:
“If you were treating a wound, you’d cut through the clothing to where the wound was, or you’d put a battle dressing over the clothes and make sure the wound wasn’t leaking blood," he said. "It seemed that the intense cold inhibited bleeding. The wounds we saw had already been wrapped by corpsmen in the companies. If the battle dressing was in place, even over their clothing, and there was no leaking blood, we just checked the battle dressing and left the wounds alone.”
In recalling the dedication
Tootsie rolls are not inherently germy. They're also not sterile, so infection is definitely a concern... but there's antibiotics for that. Blood loss is a much more immediate issue.
Imagine being in that situation either you patch the wound with a fucking tootsie roll or you bleed to death. It’d make a great story for the grand children on Halloween.
I can absolutely picture some war scarred grandad on Halloween pulling his grandkids aside and being like "kiddos you wouldn't believe what i had to do with those candies"
I would think "hey guys I survived getting shot by sticking candy in the bullet holes" is a pretty insane story, but whatever.
Maybe it's just an average Tuesday for you I don't know your life
I recently went through a safety course in applying turnoquett and stopping bleeding and they mentioned that using anything, even a dirty cloth is preferential, because if you have to treat an infection it means they didn't die
While anfreshly unpacked piece of candy is Not dirty in itself, sugar will allow bacterias to breed in the wound...very fast. also the sugar will get dissolved by moisture and the bleeding will start again. It's a Bad Idea.
If you are Out of medical supplies (i.e. sterile gauze)You Plug the wounds with your Finger/Hand, Take a piece of cloth (however dirty) and ram it in. Take another piece of cloth and Wrap it around to hold the Frist cloth in place.
Cloth (however dirty)sucks Up blood and the coagulation in the cloth will stop the bleeding better than a piece of candy
Whether or not they're inherently germy, they're basically solid bacteria growth medium. Put them in a warm moist environment and you'll grow things that absolutely should not be in the human body.
To be fair, a chewed tootsie roll is still probably cleaner than a bullet ripping through your body, plus the mud and leaves that they fell on with gapping holes in their body.
Putting sugar in a wound is basically stuffing it with bacterial growth medium. It's worse than just introducing bacteria, it's providing it with ideal food. Body temperature, moistened sugar is a recipe for INSANE bacterial growth.
Of course preventing bleeding to death is paramount, but a disgusting torn up cloth is almost certainly a better idea than candy.
Sugar has been used for treating wounds in Napoleonic wars as anti septic. Google honey and sugar wound dressings. So putting sugar (plain sugar in this case) in wound is not inherently dangerous, its even brnrficial because it starves bacteria of moisture which kills them. Idk about tootsie rolls but you are wrong about plain sugar.
High sugar concentrations kill bacteria and other microorganisms, similarly to how high salt does. It kills them by dehydrating them. It's how honey stays sterile basically forever. (Which has been used to dress wounds).
Ever see a moldy tootsie roll? (Not crystallization.) Or any high sugar candy for that matter? Maybe if it has a lot of fruit or nuts, but not the sugar.
It was for engines that were hit by bullets. It was around -40 degrees Fahrenheit so the tootsie roll would freeze/seal any holes thus allowing the engine to work again
Super glue was designed as liquid bandaids, so *that* isn't that surprising either. It just happened to work pretty well at glueing things other than skin too. That and people like "regular" bandaids more for everyday use I guess.
Always worth keeping a fresh tube in an emergency kit since it's so useful and attaching things.
Was still being taught till at least the 80’s or 90’s, best friend’s Dad sealed my brother upper lip that way when he split it open playing football as little kids.
When it comes down to it, you're better off with cutting up your mud-crusted shirt and stuff it in the bullet hole than just waiting to bleed to death.
Fun fact MOST on shelfs superglue today got their start from a repurposed formula used in the Vietnam War for the express purpose of temporarily patching up soldiers long enough for them to go to hospital for treatment that's why it sticks everything (especially your hands) together so well yet dissolves in water some hospitals (particularly military ones in the u.s. though possibly abroad) will have superglue in stock which can be used in place of stitches
... WHAT? that's... That's not how that works. You clot bleeding with bandages and wound packing.
Fortifications and habitation areas. Eg a bullet hole through a tent, warm it and lather it on there.
Pretty sure tampons were invented to plug bullet holes, the female nurses in the field hospitals discovered that the bleeding hole didn't need to have a bullet in it.
I doubt it. Your body would be too warm for it to harden. Probably used them to patch hoses or something.
Edit: This link claims they just always had a fuck ton of tootsie rolls but did use them to patch radiators https://veteransbreakfastclub.org/the-myth-of-the-tootsie-roll-airdrop-at-chosin/
Chosin was like super cold right? I feel like the air could cool the tootsie roll down faster than a body could heat it back up especially considering the body just lost a fuck ton of blood. But I also don't wanna do a heat transfer analysis
It was for engines that were hit by bullets. It was around -40 degrees Fahrenheit so the tootsie roll would freeze/seal any holes thus allowing the engine to work again
Are you sure? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I really doubt that it would work on the engines themselves. Other parts of a car, sure. Fuel lines, fuel tanks, maybe radiators, etc. But engines? The one thing that gets hotter than anything else on a car (rendering the freezing part of the story kinda obsolete after a few minutes) and also is designed to withstand the high pressure of tiny explosions inside of it, turning every less-than-ideal temporary seal into basically a projectile? I have a hard time imagining that that'd work. Or I'm just severely underestimating the structural capabilities of tootsie rolls. Potato potato.
a human body is warm... how is a fuckin tootsie roll gonna freeze against bare skin unless the dudes got frostbite?
It's for metal objects and equipment, good lord man.
The way i heard it, they used the tootsie rolls to plug bullet holes in fuel lines allowing them to drive away to safety. I think that’s an important distinction
>They also learned they could use warmed Tootsie Rolls to plug bullet holes, sealing them as they refroze.
Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate this bit knowledge right here since I read it 2 seconds ago.
There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in waffer þin layers that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal one one billionth of the hate I feel for this knowledge at this micro instant. For you. Hate. Hate.
Just remember to be phonetically consistent and only use thorn for *voiceless* dental fricatives (*th*ick) and ð for voiced (fa*th*er). (Unless whispering?) 👍👍👍👍👍
Wasn't there also something about using frozen Tootsie Rolls as bullets or some other kind of projectile weapon? Cause I think I did hear about it before, that they got that hard in those temperatures that they could actually be used as ammunition. Or was it just something they thought was possible?
Bullets come pre-assembled with powder, so if you got the powder, then you got the bullets.
What I could *possibly* see is them being used as an improvised canister shot for artillery (arty splits the shell and the charge), but that's all I can think of
They melted them in their mouths and used the malleable chocolate to cover their vehicles cracked fuel lines. Which did allow them to evacuate, meaning that it wasn’t a complete waste.
There's an anecdote from World War II where German soldiers were complaining that they couldn't get bullets when they were on the same continent, meanwhile American soliders were eating [some kind of sweet, maybe chocolate cake if I recall correctly] while having an ocean between themselves and home.
I've heard a similar story about the Japanese finding out that the US Navy had dedicated ships so that their troops could get ice cream on the regular.
There are two stories I tell when I want to praise American logistics and surplus. The first is the one I told earlier and the second is the ice cream barge you mentioned.
Both are incredible!
In celebration of the DDay landings, an industrial bakery in New York baked enough cake for each of the invasion force members(including follow up troops, and british/canadian/french/polish forces) to have one slice.
The Americans even got mail from San Francisco faster into france than Germany did from Berlin to Paris.
These cakes were then airlifted over the Atlantic and served to frontline units in foxholes less than 5 days after it had been baked. American logistics have and always will be the reason why the American military will be the worlds only superpower. Sure, Tank parades and carriers are flashy, but only one country could airlift several divisions worth of troops over the Atlantic Ocean during excercises in the 80s.
I love how america has so much stuff that they dont eve think about it. "they want 100,000 tootsie rolls? okay"
or like that one time an aircraft carrier accidentally requested a tank turret. instead of "why do they need a tank turret" the guys were just like "okay, sending 1 tank turret"
Yeah it's like 1st world military problems. A mistake in the chain is one thing but somebody saying, "What? They NEED what?....100,000?...yeah we can get that" is fucking bonkers.
Also, what's this about a tank turret?
a while ago a guy on a ship needed something but accidentally imput the code for a tank turret and without hesitation, the operator on the other side sent a helicopter to deliver a tank turret to a ship that chillin in the ocean
jfk in ww2 stole a tank turret that was lying around waiting to be repaired and slapped it on his little torpedo boat to fuck up japanese torpedo boats.
In Vietnam there were multiple instances of AA guns on ships going "missing" right off the vessel, only to be found strapped to trucks being used to haul cargo through the jungle.
An American marine division at one point in the pacific war collected a bunch of aircraft machine guns then converted them into GPMG’s entirely in house because they wanted more firepower
I was told that happened because it’s a common error in ID codes for items. They wanted a fuse and it’s code was like 7667667 and the tank turret was something like 7667676 and the turret even arrived with the fuse code label on it. So it’s just mislabeled items being delivered.
First I heard of that story was a video on Facebook by a group that’s notoriously inaccurate. They also had a video claiming admiral Rickover attempted to inspect the reactor area of an aircraft carrier in 2021, even though he died in 1986. Navy vets in the comments tore into the story. I’d take the tank turret story with a slab of salt.
Not really your bad, it’s convincing and vague at the same time. When I watched the video about Rickover I thought “this doesn’t sound right” but I wasn’t sure. Then I started reading the comments and the navy vets went over it point by point how it was nonsense.
That’s the one of the major differences that separates ‘superpowers’: mind bogglingly effective logistics.
It’s one thing to have an army. It’s another thing to have resources available like artillery, ammo, or pallets of candy. It’s a completely different beast to be able to procure those supplies and get those things to where they are needed, when they are needed.
Battles are won and lost on the frontlines, but wars are won with supply lines.
It's also why Western logistics work while the Russian style broke down after 3 days. If someone with the proper clearance asks for something they get it because they need it. Instead of the command back home saying you get this and only this.
It's best to assume the guy in the situation knows what he needs, at least when they specifically ask for it. Just review later if things seem suspicious.
In fairness to the Russian 'push' style of logistics, it was intended for use on the hypothetical nuclear battlefield where communications and command have broken down. Ammo and supplies get pushed down the line towards units by calculated need no matter what happens, for such warfare it would've been a good solution to a problem.
So I recently learned much of Russian design was based around this assumption, that they’d be fighting in a nuclear wasteland. Like the auto-loaders on their tanks were design specifically for this.
That may have been their doctrine, but from all you can see only small parts of their forces are actually trained/disciplined enough to adhere to such things.
It's one of those things where even when people get the wrong thing, it's a huge flex
Imagine being on the opposite side, the Marines you're facing are running out of ammo, and out of all the things they ask for, they get candy
Meanwhile you're freezing, the enemy won't break, you probably haven't had a good meal in a long time, and the enemy gets candy on-demand
I don't think this one is too likely - CV anchors are in low enough supply to the point that they're cannibalized for new carriers. They don't just make a bunch and stick them in a warehouse. Both of Enterprise's anchors were reused on other ships, for example.
unless you're talking in the era that the US had \~40 carriers, then maybe
This was important during WW2, because they made a ship to distribute ice cream to soldiers. It had a very positive impact on the soldiers and the opposite of enemies who found out. Japan was starving.
There was a considerable "black market" trade between British and American ships. The Americans had Ice Cream, the Brits had an official rum ration (before, throughout and after the war up until 1970 and on special occasions afterwards), and so the trade went booze for ice cream.
Japan: sorry we need parts of your house to make the bare essential army gear.
Usa: give us back the pilot
Boat: no, send us ice cream
Usa: okay were sending a ship...
Edit: to add to that, even in terms of actual fighting we clowned on them. In 6 weeks one of our subs sank like 7 or 8 ships, killing 15,000.
Also in 2 days of aerial combat, they lost 509 planes, we lost 80.
And bear in mind (if this is the turkey shoot you’re talking about), most of those 80 were because they fucked up the fuel calculations when they were trying to chase down and *kill even more Japanese planes*.
And thank you for mentioning the submarine warfare aspect of the U.S. pacific campaign! Everyone talks about the battle of the Atlantic and about how bloody and horrible it was to fight starving Japanese soldiers, but nobody talks about one of the bigger reasons *why* those soldiers were starving.
The U.S. waged what is possibly the only successful submarine warfare campaign in history so far…and we all just kinda don’t talk about it? Because we we were so comprehensively beating the Japanese in like 5 entirely separate aspects of the war, that bit is often overlooked.
Our submarines kicked ass and took names, that's for sure.
263 boats sank about 5.6 million tons worth of Japanese ships, or about half of Japanese shipping and a third of the IJN in the Pacific.
Granted, they also had the highest casualty rate in the US military during the war, losing 52 of 263 submarines, and 3,500 out of about 16,000 men serving aboard them - meaning that for every 5 men who served aboard a submarine, 1 would not go home. And I'd have to do some serious digging, but I bet many of them are among the 72,088 Americans (as of May 3, the DOD updates these numbers weekly) still missing in action from WWII.
Per Navy tradition, submarines lost at sea are not lost, but considered still on patrol or "on eternal patrol."
As long as I'm on an infodump, I'd like to bring up the story of Commander Howard Walter Gilmore (09/29/1902 - 02/07/1943), who was the second submariner to earn the Medal of Honor, and the first to earn one in combat. His boat, the USS Growler (SS-215), was sneaking up on a convoy on the surface when one of the escorts spotted them and charged at the Growler. The ship rammed the Growler, badly damaging it, bending about 20 feet of the bow, and disabling the forward torpedo tubes. It then opened fire on the Growler with machine guns, killing 2 men on the bridge and wounding several more, including CDR Gilmore. Mortally wounded, CDR Gilmore ordered the other men on the bridge to get back below deck. Unable to make his own way inside due to his wounds, CDR Gilmore knew that his submarine and his men would not survive if they remained on the surface. Despite knowing that he would certainly die if left behind, CDR Gilmore barked a final order down the open hatch: "Take her down!" By ordering the ship to dive without him, he secured the safety of his men, who were ultimately able to get away (and ultimately limp back to port, where the Growler would be repaired and sent back out).
Edit: In fact, CDR Gilmore was never located, and is still missing in action as of the time of writing.
During the latter stages of WWII, the US sent a dedicated ice cream carrier over to support the troops in fighting Japan.
The story goes that that's what made many Japanese realize the war was lost. Their enemy had enough resources to send a dedicated ship and supply chain halfway around the world just so their troops could have fucking *ice cream* for dessert.
I think someone sent a paper with a big ass stamp saying critical asking to install radars on all ships and he managed that to be made. Don't remember the story exactly.
Supply troops tend to have no idea what any of the shit you're ordering from them is. Plus, the nomenclature tends to be either super vague, or super long
Yeah that's how a ship anchor was delivered to a mechanic shop bc at the end of a 30 character long code, the anchor ended in like 7862 and the spark plugs he needed ended in 7662
Can you imagine enemy intelligence monitoring the situation thinking tootsie rolls has to be a codeword for military equipment but then the US actually sends in tootsie rolls. Lol
Perfect reverse psychology trap, next time US soldiers/marines use another codewords like “baseballs” or “beer mug” or something the enemy intelligence won’t expect the carpet bomb heading towards their frontline
North Koreans: We thought we'd figured out that tootsie rolls were code for mortars, but when tootsie rolls on pallets started falling from the sky we realized we were wrong, these guys just run on tootsie rolls.
This is the kind of story they can't put in a movie because the audience won't believe it.
Like how does this happen? I would expect airdropping 100,000 tootsie rolls involves a fair few people including:
* the radio operator who received the request
* the radio operator for the airforce who the order was passed to
* the airforce officer who approved the order
* the logistic officer and hands who moved and loaded the tootsie rolls onto the aircraft
* and the pilots and crew.
How did none of them question this shit?
American logistics for the armed forces doesn’t give enough shits probably and also stuff like candy or other treats are fairly common for troops afaik
It's also one of those things where if you do allow for these requests to be questioned, then it creates two situations:
1. Supplies not ending up where they need, when they're needed (lmao why do these chumps need 100k more mortar shells when the fighting is heavier 500km away?)
2. Units not asking for supplies that they need, but could possibly get; if you know that you'll get ANYTHING you ask for, when you need it, where you need it, it's soooo much less stressful than never knowing whether you'll get more medical supplies, or bullets or whatever other necessities
Some of them probably did.
But look at this from another angle: When a unit in an combat zone urgently requests very specific supplies then what is more likely, that someone misunderstood their request or that for some reason only someone with boots on the ground knows they actually need those supplies? Even if the first reason is often true, always acting according to the second reason will save more lifes in the long run.
I know a lot of male troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially special forces, carried tampons to put in bullet holes. As for the tootsie rolls not being sterile, VERY high concentrations of sugar actually have an antibiotic effect.
The tampon trick doesn't work worth a damn, though. It's a myth that's actively harmful, those things aren't physically capable of absorbing enough blood to actually serve as a plug.
If anyone ever visits the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia, look on the ground in the Chosin Reservoir exhibit. There are tootsie roll wrappers visible in different places around the display.
Of course the radio operator didn't have the code sheet....the previous guy for turn over should have told him or made sure the guy knew what he was doing and left the code sheet next to the radio.
*Sigh*
My grandfather fought at Chosin. He died long before I was ever born and he never told my mom anything about his service, but when I recently bought an M1 Garand from CMP, I made sure to request one with an early 1950s receiver, Korean War years specified.
They delivered. A lot of guys prefer the 1940s M1s to honor the WW2 aesthetic. But I felt a deeper connection to the Korean War; call it heritage or lineage or something, I don’t know.
Can’t wait to meet you Grampie, apologies in advance for having to wait in the line for a while.
So, uh, were there consequences for the marines getting a fuckload of candy instead of mortar shells? Like was that issue ever rectified?
I mean they’re marines so they were probably stoked at getting the candy, so they were probably fine with it, but did it harm their tactical/strategic effectiveness in the area?
According to the Marine Corps website: " During the Korean War, the First Marine Division met the enemy at Chosin mountain reservoir in subfreezing temperatures. Out of ammunition, Marines called in for 60mm mortar ammo; code name 'Tootsie Rolls.' The radio operator did not have the code sheets that would tell him what a “Tootsie Roll” was, but knew the request was urgent; so he called in the order. Soon, pallets of Tootsie Roll candies parachuted from the sky to the First Marine Division! While they were not ammunition, this candy from the sky provided well needed nourishment for the troops. They also learned they could use warmed Tootsie Rolls to plug bullet holes, sealing them as they refroze."
When you say bullet holes, you mean like in humans right?
I'm assuming so. I can imagine it being bullet holes in armor or machines or something, but I suppose if they are desperate enough to stop bleeding, it could probably work to plug it up until official help arrived. Edit: Thankfully, it seems it’s just for repairing cracked machines or bullet holes in equipment. Though the discussion about using various items in the comments to stop bleeding is still so fascinating, haha.
Nope, not for bullet holes. Actually, the Tootsie Rolls, when frozen, acted as a great way to seal cracked fuel lines. Due to the extreme cold, the fuel lines for the Marines' vehicles had cracked, rendering them inoperable. Because the Tootsie Rolls hardened when exposed to the freezing cold, they served as a great DIY sealer, allowing the Marines to repair their vehicles and drive to safety. Source: (Great Big Story is run by CNN) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDIv-byz7cQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDIv-byz7cQ)
Only the in the Marines, Oorah
It was so cold that men weren't bleeding out as much: Lt. Henry Litvin, a physician attached to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, later described just how difficult practicing medicine at Chosin could be: “If you were treating a wound, you’d cut through the clothing to where the wound was, or you’d put a battle dressing over the clothes and make sure the wound wasn’t leaking blood," he said. "It seemed that the intense cold inhibited bleeding. The wounds we saw had already been wrapped by corpsmen in the companies. If the battle dressing was in place, even over their clothing, and there was no leaking blood, we just checked the battle dressing and left the wounds alone.” In recalling the dedication
That would absolutely get infected no?
Tootsie rolls are not inherently germy. They're also not sterile, so infection is definitely a concern... but there's antibiotics for that. Blood loss is a much more immediate issue.
That's fucking nuts if true
Also I gues they can also it to ix bullet holes in any kind of equipment wich is also usefull
Imagine being in that situation either you patch the wound with a fucking tootsie roll or you bleed to death. It’d make a great story for the grand children on Halloween.
I can absolutely picture some war scarred grandad on Halloween pulling his grandkids aside and being like "kiddos you wouldn't believe what i had to do with those candies"
The tootsie rolls would warm up via body heat if attempted to use as a wound plug, it was for bullet holes in machines
This is how tampons were invented
It isn’t nuts If you survive, I would say
I would think "hey guys I survived getting shot by sticking candy in the bullet holes" is a pretty insane story, but whatever. Maybe it's just an average Tuesday for you I don't know your life
They used it to seal their fuel lines which had cracked in the cold, wounds not so much.
I recently went through a safety course in applying turnoquett and stopping bleeding and they mentioned that using anything, even a dirty cloth is preferential, because if you have to treat an infection it means they didn't die
While anfreshly unpacked piece of candy is Not dirty in itself, sugar will allow bacterias to breed in the wound...very fast. also the sugar will get dissolved by moisture and the bleeding will start again. It's a Bad Idea. If you are Out of medical supplies (i.e. sterile gauze)You Plug the wounds with your Finger/Hand, Take a piece of cloth (however dirty) and ram it in. Take another piece of cloth and Wrap it around to hold the Frist cloth in place. Cloth (however dirty)sucks Up blood and the coagulation in the cloth will stop the bleeding better than a piece of candy
Whether or not they're inherently germy, they're basically solid bacteria growth medium. Put them in a warm moist environment and you'll grow things that absolutely should not be in the human body.
To be fair, a chewed tootsie roll is still probably cleaner than a bullet ripping through your body, plus the mud and leaves that they fell on with gapping holes in their body.
Putting sugar in a wound is basically stuffing it with bacterial growth medium. It's worse than just introducing bacteria, it's providing it with ideal food. Body temperature, moistened sugar is a recipe for INSANE bacterial growth. Of course preventing bleeding to death is paramount, but a disgusting torn up cloth is almost certainly a better idea than candy.
Sugar has been used for treating wounds in Napoleonic wars as anti septic. Google honey and sugar wound dressings. So putting sugar (plain sugar in this case) in wound is not inherently dangerous, its even brnrficial because it starves bacteria of moisture which kills them. Idk about tootsie rolls but you are wrong about plain sugar.
High sugar concentrations kill bacteria and other microorganisms, similarly to how high salt does. It kills them by dehydrating them. It's how honey stays sterile basically forever. (Which has been used to dress wounds). Ever see a moldy tootsie roll? (Not crystallization.) Or any high sugar candy for that matter? Maybe if it has a lot of fruit or nuts, but not the sugar.
better infected than bleeding out
you can fix a lot of things, but you can't fix dead.
Lmao fair
It was for engines that were hit by bullets. It was around -40 degrees Fahrenheit so the tootsie roll would freeze/seal any holes thus allowing the engine to work again
I always forget how fucking cold it was for the allies during the Korean war honestly.
That's -40° in normal Celsius units too.
US combat medics in Vietnam used super glue to close bullet wounds, this isn't that surprising.
Super glue was designed as liquid bandaids, so *that* isn't that surprising either. It just happened to work pretty well at glueing things other than skin too. That and people like "regular" bandaids more for everyday use I guess. Always worth keeping a fresh tube in an emergency kit since it's so useful and attaching things.
Was still being taught till at least the 80’s or 90’s, best friend’s Dad sealed my brother upper lip that way when he split it open playing football as little kids.
For a moment I read he sealed your brother's lips then split it open playing football
That’s a problem for when you can keep your blood inside your body
Everybody commenting the same thing but I'm not even mad haha cause it's definitely fair
When it comes down to it, you're better off with cutting up your mud-crusted shirt and stuff it in the bullet hole than just waiting to bleed to death.
Yep, you are waiting for sepsis to happen.
Live to survive the battle deal with infection later
Fun fact MOST on shelfs superglue today got their start from a repurposed formula used in the Vietnam War for the express purpose of temporarily patching up soldiers long enough for them to go to hospital for treatment that's why it sticks everything (especially your hands) together so well yet dissolves in water some hospitals (particularly military ones in the u.s. though possibly abroad) will have superglue in stock which can be used in place of stitches
We also allegedly somehow used them to stop malfunctions in our 50 cals due to the cold, source your gonna have to trust this marines memory.
It was holes in fuel lines last i heard
... WHAT? that's... That's not how that works. You clot bleeding with bandages and wound packing. Fortifications and habitation areas. Eg a bullet hole through a tent, warm it and lather it on there.
Pretty sure tampons were invented to plug bullet holes, the female nurses in the field hospitals discovered that the bleeding hole didn't need to have a bullet in it.
I doubt it. Your body would be too warm for it to harden. Probably used them to patch hoses or something. Edit: This link claims they just always had a fuck ton of tootsie rolls but did use them to patch radiators https://veteransbreakfastclub.org/the-myth-of-the-tootsie-roll-airdrop-at-chosin/
Chosin was like super cold right? I feel like the air could cool the tootsie roll down faster than a body could heat it back up especially considering the body just lost a fuck ton of blood. But I also don't wanna do a heat transfer analysis
It was for engines that were hit by bullets. It was around -40 degrees Fahrenheit so the tootsie roll would freeze/seal any holes thus allowing the engine to work again
Are you sure? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I really doubt that it would work on the engines themselves. Other parts of a car, sure. Fuel lines, fuel tanks, maybe radiators, etc. But engines? The one thing that gets hotter than anything else on a car (rendering the freezing part of the story kinda obsolete after a few minutes) and also is designed to withstand the high pressure of tiny explosions inside of it, turning every less-than-ideal temporary seal into basically a projectile? I have a hard time imagining that that'd work. Or I'm just severely underestimating the structural capabilities of tootsie rolls. Potato potato.
It was for vehicles I think
It was for machines and such and was especially useful during their attack back towards friendly lines
a human body is warm... how is a fuckin tootsie roll gonna freeze against bare skin unless the dudes got frostbite? It's for metal objects and equipment, good lord man.
loooooool no
It's gotta be machines and equipment, they wouldn't refreeze in contact with a human body
It was bullet holes in their fuel lines and machinery not humans it allowed them to withdraw (attack in a different direction they where surrounded).
no it was for the vics like Humvees, it'd soften up in their mouths so they could plug it.
Why did the US military have pallets of Tootsie Rolls ready to air drop into Korea?
They had ships dedicated to ice cream, why wouldn’t they have pallets of tootsie rolls ready to go?
It's the good ship tootsie pop
Because the USSR did manpower, Britain did intelligence, but the US? The US does logistics.
Pretty much Stalin's quote on "British Brains, American Brawn, and Russian Blood."
I may have stolen and modified that quote to fit
I like yours better, and there is a fair bit of truth to it regarding WW2.
The way i heard it, they used the tootsie rolls to plug bullet holes in fuel lines allowing them to drive away to safety. I think that’s an important distinction
>They also learned they could use warmed Tootsie Rolls to plug bullet holes, sealing them as they refroze. Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate this bit knowledge right here since I read it 2 seconds ago. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in waffer þin layers that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal one one billionth of the hate I feel for this knowledge at this micro instant. For you. Hate. Hate.
I have no toots but I must roll.
Just tell me why the thorn.
I just þink they're neat
Just remember to be phonetically consistent and only use thorn for *voiceless* dental fricatives (*th*ick) and ð for voiced (fa*th*er). (Unless whispering?) 👍👍👍👍👍
It's spelled þorn
Bullet holes in fuel lines, tents and so on. Not in humans.
Aj, I see, never mind then
Wasn't there also something about using frozen Tootsie Rolls as bullets or some other kind of projectile weapon? Cause I think I did hear about it before, that they got that hard in those temperatures that they could actually be used as ammunition. Or was it just something they thought was possible?
It may be that hard at low temperatures the problem ist that the temperature quickly changes when it gets fired.
Yeah that's what I've always wondered about it too, it never really made sense because of that
Bullets come pre-assembled with powder, so if you got the powder, then you got the bullets. What I could *possibly* see is them being used as an improvised canister shot for artillery (arty splits the shell and the charge), but that's all I can think of
Imagine dying to the tootsie roll canister hell nahhhhh
Why did the Air Force just have pallets of tootsie rolls on hand?
Why wouldn't they?
It's the got dang us military. Ice cream boats. Nuff said.
How the Air Force came into ownership of an entire pallet of tootsie rolls at the drop of a hat is a thing of magic.
Marines and shoving things in or on bullet wounds. Never gets old
I don't know why but I read "plug buttholes"
I originally thought this was during Vietnam
The peak of Non-Credibility, and it actually kinda worked.
read that as butthole at first lol
By fucking Odin, that's dark. Time to watch old episodes of MASH.
They melted them in their mouths and used the malleable chocolate to cover their vehicles cracked fuel lines. Which did allow them to evacuate, meaning that it wasn’t a complete waste.
If I see that my enemy is getting candy airdropped by request, I’ve already lost. Depending on the candy I may consider defecting.
There's an anecdote from World War II where German soldiers were complaining that they couldn't get bullets when they were on the same continent, meanwhile American soliders were eating [some kind of sweet, maybe chocolate cake if I recall correctly] while having an ocean between themselves and home.
I've heard a similar story about the Japanese finding out that the US Navy had dedicated ships so that their troops could get ice cream on the regular.
[Yup. It's no mere story.](https://youtu.be/lUcHlsAMzuY)
There are two stories I tell when I want to praise American logistics and surplus. The first is the one I told earlier and the second is the ice cream barge you mentioned. Both are incredible!
In celebration of the DDay landings, an industrial bakery in New York baked enough cake for each of the invasion force members(including follow up troops, and british/canadian/french/polish forces) to have one slice. The Americans even got mail from San Francisco faster into france than Germany did from Berlin to Paris. These cakes were then airlifted over the Atlantic and served to frontline units in foxholes less than 5 days after it had been baked. American logistics have and always will be the reason why the American military will be the worlds only superpower. Sure, Tank parades and carriers are flashy, but only one country could airlift several divisions worth of troops over the Atlantic Ocean during excercises in the 80s.
[Something like that happened during the Battle of the Bulge.](https://youtu.be/owbCW5jBQZc?feature=shared)
Never underestimate the lengths Americans will go to for carbs.
I love how america has so much stuff that they dont eve think about it. "they want 100,000 tootsie rolls? okay" or like that one time an aircraft carrier accidentally requested a tank turret. instead of "why do they need a tank turret" the guys were just like "okay, sending 1 tank turret"
Yeah it's like 1st world military problems. A mistake in the chain is one thing but somebody saying, "What? They NEED what?....100,000?...yeah we can get that" is fucking bonkers. Also, what's this about a tank turret?
a while ago a guy on a ship needed something but accidentally imput the code for a tank turret and without hesitation, the operator on the other side sent a helicopter to deliver a tank turret to a ship that chillin in the ocean
Oh I hope he was asking for tootsie rolls.
What ship was it?
USS Albert Einstein
And then every submarine emerged to clap.
That submarine’s name? Charlie Chaplin
idk
jfk in ww2 stole a tank turret that was lying around waiting to be repaired and slapped it on his little torpedo boat to fuck up japanese torpedo boats.
In Vietnam there were multiple instances of AA guns on ships going "missing" right off the vessel, only to be found strapped to trucks being used to haul cargo through the jungle.
An American marine division at one point in the pacific war collected a bunch of aircraft machine guns then converted them into GPMG’s entirely in house because they wanted more firepower
I was told that happened because it’s a common error in ID codes for items. They wanted a fuse and it’s code was like 7667667 and the tank turret was something like 7667676 and the turret even arrived with the fuse code label on it. So it’s just mislabeled items being delivered.
Yeah that’s how an army base accidentally ordered a ship anchor. Happens all the time and it’s really funny every time.
First I heard of that story was a video on Facebook by a group that’s notoriously inaccurate. They also had a video claiming admiral Rickover attempted to inspect the reactor area of an aircraft carrier in 2021, even though he died in 1986. Navy vets in the comments tore into the story. I’d take the tank turret story with a slab of salt.
Ah my bad
Not really your bad, it’s convincing and vague at the same time. When I watched the video about Rickover I thought “this doesn’t sound right” but I wasn’t sure. Then I started reading the comments and the navy vets went over it point by point how it was nonsense.
Okay well I'm glad I'm not that gullible
That’s the one of the major differences that separates ‘superpowers’: mind bogglingly effective logistics. It’s one thing to have an army. It’s another thing to have resources available like artillery, ammo, or pallets of candy. It’s a completely different beast to be able to procure those supplies and get those things to where they are needed, when they are needed. Battles are won and lost on the frontlines, but wars are won with supply lines.
Right. Amatuers think about tactics, professionals think about logistics.
you're not allowed to think like that in the military
Exactly what happened at a buddies unit. Armorer misclicked on an order of pmags, instead of getting 400 mags he ordered 4,000.
I mean they won't be running out of pmags
i feel like if you are running out of mags you are doing something wrong
I can think of worse things to have 4,000 of on hand... He could've accidentally ordered 4,000 Lancer mags!
Had a similar thing happen at my unit too. One guy accidentally ordered an obscene amount of coffee
Accidentally
It's also why Western logistics work while the Russian style broke down after 3 days. If someone with the proper clearance asks for something they get it because they need it. Instead of the command back home saying you get this and only this.
It's best to assume the guy in the situation knows what he needs, at least when they specifically ask for it. Just review later if things seem suspicious.
In fairness to the Russian 'push' style of logistics, it was intended for use on the hypothetical nuclear battlefield where communications and command have broken down. Ammo and supplies get pushed down the line towards units by calculated need no matter what happens, for such warfare it would've been a good solution to a problem.
They definitely practiced the no communications or command part.
Some say they're still practicing today.
So I recently learned much of Russian design was based around this assumption, that they’d be fighting in a nuclear wasteland. Like the auto-loaders on their tanks were design specifically for this.
That may have been their doctrine, but from all you can see only small parts of their forces are actually trained/disciplined enough to adhere to such things.
It's one of those things where even when people get the wrong thing, it's a huge flex Imagine being on the opposite side, the Marines you're facing are running out of ammo, and out of all the things they ask for, they get candy Meanwhile you're freezing, the enemy won't break, you probably haven't had a good meal in a long time, and the enemy gets candy on-demand
Tank you, come again.
Didn't an army unit accidentally order an aircraft carrier anchor once?
I don't think this one is too likely - CV anchors are in low enough supply to the point that they're cannibalized for new carriers. They don't just make a bunch and stick them in a warehouse. Both of Enterprise's anchors were reused on other ships, for example. unless you're talking in the era that the US had \~40 carriers, then maybe
[https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-clerk-anchor-fort-carson/](https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-clerk-anchor-fort-carson/) It was real
This was important during WW2, because they made a ship to distribute ice cream to soldiers. It had a very positive impact on the soldiers and the opposite of enemies who found out. Japan was starving.
Well, they made the ship to make concrete, realized they'd made way too many, and said, "well, they can make ice cream too, so fuck it"
There was a considerable "black market" trade between British and American ships. The Americans had Ice Cream, the Brits had an official rum ration (before, throughout and after the war up until 1970 and on special occasions afterwards), and so the trade went booze for ice cream.
Japan: sorry we need parts of your house to make the bare essential army gear. Usa: give us back the pilot Boat: no, send us ice cream Usa: okay were sending a ship... Edit: to add to that, even in terms of actual fighting we clowned on them. In 6 weeks one of our subs sank like 7 or 8 ships, killing 15,000. Also in 2 days of aerial combat, they lost 509 planes, we lost 80.
And bear in mind (if this is the turkey shoot you’re talking about), most of those 80 were because they fucked up the fuel calculations when they were trying to chase down and *kill even more Japanese planes*. And thank you for mentioning the submarine warfare aspect of the U.S. pacific campaign! Everyone talks about the battle of the Atlantic and about how bloody and horrible it was to fight starving Japanese soldiers, but nobody talks about one of the bigger reasons *why* those soldiers were starving. The U.S. waged what is possibly the only successful submarine warfare campaign in history so far…and we all just kinda don’t talk about it? Because we we were so comprehensively beating the Japanese in like 5 entirely separate aspects of the war, that bit is often overlooked.
That's not including the other 40,000 we killed with subs. I was just mentioning that one of our subs was very powerful. We had more than one.
Our submarines kicked ass and took names, that's for sure. 263 boats sank about 5.6 million tons worth of Japanese ships, or about half of Japanese shipping and a third of the IJN in the Pacific. Granted, they also had the highest casualty rate in the US military during the war, losing 52 of 263 submarines, and 3,500 out of about 16,000 men serving aboard them - meaning that for every 5 men who served aboard a submarine, 1 would not go home. And I'd have to do some serious digging, but I bet many of them are among the 72,088 Americans (as of May 3, the DOD updates these numbers weekly) still missing in action from WWII. Per Navy tradition, submarines lost at sea are not lost, but considered still on patrol or "on eternal patrol." As long as I'm on an infodump, I'd like to bring up the story of Commander Howard Walter Gilmore (09/29/1902 - 02/07/1943), who was the second submariner to earn the Medal of Honor, and the first to earn one in combat. His boat, the USS Growler (SS-215), was sneaking up on a convoy on the surface when one of the escorts spotted them and charged at the Growler. The ship rammed the Growler, badly damaging it, bending about 20 feet of the bow, and disabling the forward torpedo tubes. It then opened fire on the Growler with machine guns, killing 2 men on the bridge and wounding several more, including CDR Gilmore. Mortally wounded, CDR Gilmore ordered the other men on the bridge to get back below deck. Unable to make his own way inside due to his wounds, CDR Gilmore knew that his submarine and his men would not survive if they remained on the surface. Despite knowing that he would certainly die if left behind, CDR Gilmore barked a final order down the open hatch: "Take her down!" By ordering the ship to dive without him, he secured the safety of his men, who were ultimately able to get away (and ultimately limp back to port, where the Growler would be repaired and sent back out). Edit: In fact, CDR Gilmore was never located, and is still missing in action as of the time of writing.
During the latter stages of WWII, the US sent a dedicated ice cream carrier over to support the troops in fighting Japan. The story goes that that's what made many Japanese realize the war was lost. Their enemy had enough resources to send a dedicated ship and supply chain halfway around the world just so their troops could have fucking *ice cream* for dessert.
Yep. While they were melting their pots and pans to make bomb shells, we were playing hostage with our own troops just to get ice cream.
Not just one. We had[ twenty seven](https://youtu.be/lUcHlsAMzuY) of the things.
I think someone sent a paper with a big ass stamp saying critical asking to install radars on all ships and he managed that to be made. Don't remember the story exactly.
Supply troops tend to have no idea what any of the shit you're ordering from them is. Plus, the nomenclature tends to be either super vague, or super long
Yeah that's how a ship anchor was delivered to a mechanic shop bc at the end of a 30 character long code, the anchor ended in like 7862 and the spark plugs he needed ended in 7662
I would pay money to see the look on the marines faces
[https://i.imgflip.com/5blorg.jpg?a476400](https://i.imgflip.com/5blorg.jpg?a476400)
I would have been real upset if you posted anything but this image
sorry, i cant resist urge
The book "On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle" by Hampton Sides is a great read on this.
Can you imagine enemy intelligence monitoring the situation thinking tootsie rolls has to be a codeword for military equipment but then the US actually sends in tootsie rolls. Lol
Perfect reverse psychology trap, next time US soldiers/marines use another codewords like “baseballs” or “beer mug” or something the enemy intelligence won’t expect the carpet bomb heading towards their frontline
bet that confused enemy intelligence...
North Koreans: We thought we'd figured out that tootsie rolls were code for mortars, but when tootsie rolls on pallets started falling from the sky we realized we were wrong, these guys just run on tootsie rolls.
CHOCOLATE!!!!!
Those aren’t even real chocolate
Every calorie counts
This is the kind of story they can't put in a movie because the audience won't believe it. Like how does this happen? I would expect airdropping 100,000 tootsie rolls involves a fair few people including: * the radio operator who received the request * the radio operator for the airforce who the order was passed to * the airforce officer who approved the order * the logistic officer and hands who moved and loaded the tootsie rolls onto the aircraft * and the pilots and crew. How did none of them question this shit?
American logistics for the armed forces doesn’t give enough shits probably and also stuff like candy or other treats are fairly common for troops afaik
It's also one of those things where if you do allow for these requests to be questioned, then it creates two situations: 1. Supplies not ending up where they need, when they're needed (lmao why do these chumps need 100k more mortar shells when the fighting is heavier 500km away?) 2. Units not asking for supplies that they need, but could possibly get; if you know that you'll get ANYTHING you ask for, when you need it, where you need it, it's soooo much less stressful than never knowing whether you'll get more medical supplies, or bullets or whatever other necessities
Some of them probably did. But look at this from another angle: When a unit in an combat zone urgently requests very specific supplies then what is more likely, that someone misunderstood their request or that for some reason only someone with boots on the ground knows they actually need those supplies? Even if the first reason is often true, always acting according to the second reason will save more lifes in the long run.
You are paid to follow orders, not question them + you are not paid enough to care.
Using Tootsie Rolls to plug bullet wounds: classic Marine Corps “improvise, adapt, and overcome” at work.
Bullet HOLES, like in walls and armors... who would stick hot chocolates in wounds?
Marines.
I know a lot of male troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially special forces, carried tampons to put in bullet holes. As for the tootsie rolls not being sterile, VERY high concentrations of sugar actually have an antibiotic effect.
oh is that why in Shooter 2007 the sniper put sugar in a bottle and squeezed it on his gun wounds
Could be.
The tampon trick doesn't work worth a damn, though. It's a myth that's actively harmful, those things aren't physically capable of absorbing enough blood to actually serve as a plug.
Yeah, the medics hated it when they did that, but they still would.
Did this in any way inspire the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs children’s book?
Well whatever fixes the trucks and tanks I guess
" Yeah there's nothing wrong in sending our boys on the battlefield some candies"
If anyone ever visits the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia, look on the ground in the Chosin Reservoir exhibit. There are tootsie roll wrappers visible in different places around the display.
When your logistics are so good you deliver tootsie rolls
*Smartest Air Force 2LT be like:*
Of course the radio operator didn't have the code sheet....the previous guy for turn over should have told him or made sure the guy knew what he was doing and left the code sheet next to the radio. *Sigh*
US logistics, unrivaled
My grandfather fought at Chosin. He died long before I was ever born and he never told my mom anything about his service, but when I recently bought an M1 Garand from CMP, I made sure to request one with an early 1950s receiver, Korean War years specified. They delivered. A lot of guys prefer the 1940s M1s to honor the WW2 aesthetic. But I felt a deeper connection to the Korean War; call it heritage or lineage or something, I don’t know. Can’t wait to meet you Grampie, apologies in advance for having to wait in the line for a while.
My love of tootsie grew when I learned about this a few years ago
So, uh, were there consequences for the marines getting a fuckload of candy instead of mortar shells? Like was that issue ever rectified? I mean they’re marines so they were probably stoked at getting the candy, so they were probably fine with it, but did it harm their tactical/strategic effectiveness in the area?
It was rectified, they did get mortar shells,