A friend posted this article on FB, I'd never heard of anything like this before. http://instapinch.com/?p=2094
I can't remember if it was one of Fred Eckhardt's WW2 stories or another historical book I read, but US aviators used to take cases of beer up to the highest altitude in C-47 transports in order to "chill" them down for everyone. I can imagine those barrels may have been at the perfect temp by the time they landed.
Fred told that once when we met. I then told him that a friends dad was in the Flying Tigers. They were exceted when they would get some American beer. Put in back of the pilots seat and go up to 20,000 feet to cool it off. He said they always got into a dogfight and came back with the plane shot up. Everyone would run up asking about the condition of the beer, not the pilot.
My father was in the Air Force in the Pacific during World War II. He tolde me that he and his fellow crew members would buy cans of warm beer from Marines on one island for a nickel a can and sell it to Marines on the next island for $1 a can.
