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Wheeler "Johnny" Lipes, 84, a Navy pharmacist's mate who performed a remarkable, improvised appendectomy during a World War II submarine run 120 feet under the Pacific Ocean, died on April 17 at a hospital in New Bern, N.C. He had pancreatic cancer.
Mr. Lipes, who retired as a lieutenant commander, was a 22-year-old high school dropout at the time of his surgical feat in 1942. The Lipes legend was chronicled in a Pulitzer Prize-winning news account, provided a surge of morale during a period of desperately bad news from the Pacific and helped inspire a wartime action film starring Cary Grant.
Doctors were not assigned to submarines at the time. Mr. Lipes led the first of three successful surgeries by submarine corpsmen during the war but was ostracized by Navy Medical Corps physicians. They were angered by his actions, even though he had been obeying his captain's orders. There was talk of a court-martial by the outraged surgeon general of the Navy, who was forced to set protocols for appendectomies on submarines.
Mr. Lipes was the only medical professional aboard the submarine Seadragon on Sept. 11, 1942, when seaman Darrell Rector complained about a pain in his belly. Mr. Lipes examined Rector and determined his appendix was about to burst, but he was reluctant to work on the 19-year-old Kansan.
The Seadragon's captain, knowing he was in the hostile South China Sea and days from home port in Fremantle, Australia, ordered Mr. Lipes to collect a team and use whatever supplies he could find. e converted a dining table into an operating table. Bent tablespoon handles became retractors to hold open the incision and abdominal muscles. Aides poured ether on gauze and placed it over a tea strainer as an anesthesia mask for Rector.
They sterilized instruments with boiling water. They used "torpedo juice," alcohol that usually fueled the Seadragon's torpedoes, to kill germs. Pajamas substituted for surgical clothing.
Mr. Lipes used the McBurney's point, the most tender area of the abdomen of patients in the early stage of appendicitis, to locate the inflamed appendix. He made his incision, but the appendix did not pop up as expected. Looking around, he found it a massive five-inches long and stuck to three places on the lining of the intestine, which, if it broke, would pour pus into the abdomen and kill the patient. Part of the appendix was gangrenous. ielding a scalpel blade -- he lacked the full scalpel -- he gently removed the appendix while wafts of ether filled the cabin. he operation lasted 2 hours. The Seadragon sent an eye-catching message back to base: "One Merchant Ship, One Oil Tanker and One Successful Appendectomy."
News spread through the prize-winning story in the Chicago Daily News. The film Destination Tokyo (1943), starring Cary Grant as the skipper, featured a submarine appendectomy. ector returned to duty but died two years later aboard the submarine Tang, whose launched torpedo circled back and hit the vessel.
Wheeler Bryson Lipes was born July 12, 1920, in New Castle, Va. He joined the Navy at age 16, later receiving a high school diploma through a GED program and attending George Washington University. In 1953, Mr. Lipes was commissioned an ensign in the Navy's Medical Service Corps. Later, he was a finance officer at the naval hospital in Memphis and did hospital administration work before retiring in 1991 as president of Memorial Medical Center in Corpus Christi, Texas.
His military decorations included the Purple Heart. Lobbying by Navy historians led to his receiving the Navy Commendation Medal at a February ceremony at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
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