Vitamins for Victory

Carrots, says the back of this menu, “are of particular importance to the air force” because they help “prevent night blindness.” In fact, that was a myth spread by the British air force to explain why it was able to shoot down so many German planes at night, when the real explanation was radar.

Click image to download a 1.5-MB PDF of this menu.

Inside, the a la carte menu has a printer code of “2-4-46,” which I normally would assume means the menu was printed on February 4, 1946. However, a table d’hôte insert is dated May 2nd, 1943. That makes more sense because by 1946 the war was over and, while carrots were still important, they were no longer vital to victory. However, it does say that I’ll have to be careful interpreting printer codes on these menus.

We’ve previously seen this menu cover on an image from the California Railroad Museum. The scans for this menu were contributed by a Streamliner Memories reader, to whom I am grateful.


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