W.B. Lipes, 84; Performed Historic Appendectomy Aboard Sub During WWII

Wheeler Bryson "Johnny" Lipes, the Navy pharmacist's mate who during World War II performed the first emergency appendectomy ever done aboard a submerged submarine, has died. He was 84.

Lipes died of pancreatic cancer Sunday in New Bern, N.C.

His historic surgery was one of the most famous lifesaving acts of the war.

" 'They are giving him ether now,' was what they said back in the aft torpedo rooms. 'He's gone under, and they're ready to cut him open,' the crew whispered sitting on their pipe bunks cramped between torpedoes," was the opening paragraph of a story by war correspondent George Weller in the Chicago Daily News on Dec. 14, 1942.

The story, picked up by other newspapers and devoured by Americans hungry for good news in the early stages of the war, earned Weller a Pulitzer Prize. Lipes, the accidental surgeon, became an instant hero and was asked to make speeches encouraging the sale of war bonds and increased industrial production.

Lipes' operation was further memorialized in the films "Destination Tokyo" (1943) and "Run Silent, Run Deep" (1958) and in the 1950s television series about the submarine fleet, "The Silent Service." The Navy subsequently produced its own film, "The Pharmacist's Mate."

In February 2005, Lipes belatedly received a Navy Commendation Medal at Camp Lejeune, N.C., for the appendectomy he performed Sept. 11, 1942, in the officers' mess of the Seadragon, 120 feet beneath the surface of the South China Sea.

At the medal ceremony, Lipes consistently downplayed the feat, as he had for more than 60 years, saying, "I did what I had to do to save a man's life. Darrell Rector was the brave one."

"I've asked myself, 'Would I have gotten up on that table and let someone do the same thing to me?' " Lipes told the Associated Press in February. "He was one of the most courageous people I've ever met."

Seaman Darrell Dean Rector, then 19, was the patient. Thirteen days after Lipes operated, referring to a medical manual and holding the incision open with bent spoons sterilized in boiling water, Rector was back on duty.

The seaman died two years later with 77 others when the submarine Tang was destroyed by one of its own torpedoes.

Lipes, who had observed appendectomies but never performed any surgery, was reluctant to operate. But the commanding officer, convinced that Lipes knew more about medical procedures than any of the superior officers assembled to assist, ordered him to proceed.