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Down in the sick bay of the British aircraft carrier Victorious — on loan to the US Pacific fleet — a rating lay very ill with diphtheria. All the diphtheria serum in the ship’s medical stores had been used. Serum was borrowed from the sick-bays of escorting destroyers until there was none left.

Soon after midnight, the doctors on the Victorious reported to their captain that there was only one possibility left. It meant breaking wireless silence, a dangerous procedure, but a sailor was dying.

At 12.30 am, a signal went out from the British aircraft carrier to American Command HQ. all they could do in the Victorious was wait. Panama was 1,300 miles away, and finding a ship in mid-ocean is harder than finding a needle in a haystack — but only 16 ½ hours later, look-outs sighted a Liberator aircraft coming towards them, carrying the precious serum. It was dropped in a waterproof container, picked up by a destroyer and passed over to the aircraft carrier.

The rating’s life was saved — by American enterprise, endurance, navigation and co-operation.

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