I was reading a Wikipedia post on the WWII Emergency Shipbuilding Program, and it includes a passage about builders using ripe bananas to substitute for grease when launching ships. The passage does not include a citation. Can any of you comment on the accuracy of this?
So I was extremely skeptical about this for a lot of reasons, but especially because several accompanying details are kind of misleading or confusingly written. Also, I had not come across this anecdote before in accounts of Liberty Ship production. So I was going to write a post explaining how this is probably folklore... but In googling to check a few facts I actually turned up a secondary source:
And this book sites a Houston Chronicle article from 1941 as a primary source.
So there is at least some basis to think this might have actually happened at least a few times in the Pennsylvania shipyard ( confusingly located in the Houston area.)