After removing it, he cauterized the stump with phenol, which was used on subs as an industrial cleaning solvent. Lipes had to hunt for the enlarged, displaced and gangrenous appendix, doubling the time an appendectomy normally takes. Lipes, Hoskins, the commanding officer and two others performed the two-hour, 36-minute surgery on the officers’ bolted-down dining table. He learned, he said in 1987, that “you can do an appendectomy with three ounces of ether. Hoskins, the lieutenant who anesthetized Rector - and made the submarine’s crew woozy - by pouring ether through gauze and a tea strainer, attended medical school after the war. 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.

Lipes, who had observed appendectomies but never performed any surgery, was reluctant to operate. The seaman died two years later with 77 others when the submarine Tang was destroyed by one of its own torpedoes.

Navy world war ii movie appendicitis