The journalistic prose in the late summer of 1943 couldn't have gotten much purpler, short of entering into the fictional world of Walter Mitty as created by James Thurber.
A heavy bomber pounds though the southern night, a rare and dangerous night flight in those years , on a cross country mission of mercy to save a winsome young girl with only hours to live.
Eight thousand pounds of death dealing high explosives, the normal cargo of the B-24 bomber, had been abruptly jettisoned for just eight grams of precious lifesaving penicillin.
The Liberator bomber (The Liberator ! : you didn't think the B-24 Liberator was picked over the B-17 Flying Fortress by accident did you ?) was met at the airport at Macon Georgia by Klieg Lights, reporters' flash bulbs, screaming sirens and a police motorcycle escort.
The attractive teenage girl's progress and her every comment was breathlessly reported.
What red blooded teenage boy won't wanted to have been that handsomely uniformed rakish young pilot jockeying that magnificent steed of the air to win the heart of fair maiden ?
Walter Mitty lives in the breast of most of us.
Combining lifesaving penicillin, a 'just hours to live' race against time , and "The Gospel of the Air" was a heady and astute mix for the US Army PR staff to whip up.
Though they were to get only a minority of the long promised but never quite delivered penicillin , the US Army was getting 110% of the blame for penicillin shortages and it didn't like that.
Not one bit.
The US Army Air Force, and not the US Navy and certainly not the OSRD (stick-handing off the blame to others, as always) , figured in most of these air-penicillin rescues that somehow never failed to make it into the papers.
Bogged down in Italy, the US Army that summer certainly won all the really key battles - in Washington DC and in the women's pages of every hometown newspaper ....
