Hello, can someone please tell me what the US Navy used as mascots on their warships as they sailed across the Pacific during WW2? Thanks.
Hello Grower,
My father is a US Navy WWII veteran. I asked him about this after seeing your post. He said they had a monkey on board their ship for a while as a mascot. He said many of the ships had monkeys for mascots because the natives on the islands would give them away to the sailors. He thinks that they got their mascot in New Guinea but is not positive.
But, according to my father, the monkey got “ferocious” because of too much attention and bit a sailor, then it was tossed overboard as its penalty. 
(My father wasn’t the one to throw it overboard.)
They might have got it there in a trade with someone who brought it there from somewhere else, but I think that monkeys are not native to New Guinea. I can’t recall any reference to monkeys in any of my fairly extensive readings of Australian and American campaigns there.
Although given the way the country’s been run since being given independence from Australia several decades ago, I’m willing to accept that it’s run by monkeys. (Yeah, that makes me a fascist racist for daring to say that the place is a fairly lawless shithole, like a lot of other former European/ Western colonies around the planet given independence and which on a scale of 1 to 10 are run somewhere between 2 and minus a gazillion.)
This was the standard and accepted naval penalty for animals which harmed the crew, as exemplified in the following verse from The Good Ship Venus.
The ship’s dog’s name was Rover,
The whole crew did him over.
They all got pox
Upon their cocks.
So overboard went Rover.
Eww… Something to be said about women in the military nowadays. (Tongue in cheek)
Well so far you are all wrong as to what was used as mascots!!! I am eagerly awaiting the correct answer.
Well, I didn’t know we were in the quiz section.
But I did talk to my father and that’s what he told me. So, I’ll go with what he said. I’m sure there were many more mascots than just monkeys on board the ships considering the hundreds if not thousands of vessels.
Me neither, but let’s go with the flow.
Dogs were popular mascots.
Or maybe Billy the Goat.
And if none of the preceding answers are correct, the quiz must be precise about exactly what is meant by ‘warship’, as distinct from troop transports, cargo ships, and merchant ships.
Moved to Quiz Room when I worked out that it was a quiz and not a request for info as navyson and I, and no doubt others, originally thought.
“Circa 1944. Butch O’Brien, a spaniel mascot of the US Navy onboard his ship in the Sea of Japan. He is wearing a lifejacket with his name on it.”
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
