Medicine: Saved in Mid-Air

Lieut. Andrew Aloysius Doyle of Brooklyn had lost much blood. Bombardier-navigator of an Army 6-25, he was severely wounded in the legs during the bombing of a Jap base in the Marshalls. He might have died but for a plasma transfusion fellow crew members gave him in midair. Plasma transfusions by doctors and nurses aboard big, bunk-filled hospital evacuation planes are nothing new. But Lieut. Doyle’s planemates had never given a full transfusion before. (The flight surgeon, Captain Lowell Ladd Eddy, had insisted on crews taking along plasma, had taught them how to use it.)

There was not much room in the crowded, pencil-thin 6-25 to lay the wounded man down. There was less room to mix the dried, tan-colored plasma with distilled water, to set’ up the bottle and insert the rubber tube in the wounded man’s arm. But Co-Pilot August Mirzaoff and Engineer R. V. Smith Jr. remembered their lessons. Slowly life began to return to Doyle’s deathly-pale face. By the time the 6-25 reached a base he was much stronger, was pronounced a sure shot for recovery. –