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Plasma pioneer
I would like to add a bit to your ‘Life Blood’ article in MHM 150 (February/March 2026). Dr Charles Drew (1904-1950), an African American doctor, actually discovered and pioneered large-scale blood plasma-processing during WWII. He discovered plasma could be separated from whole blood and stored for long periods of time. He directed the ‘Blood For Britain’ programme in 1940, which shipped thousands of litres of blood to the UK. Dr Drew was known as ‘The Father of the Blood Bank’, and he developed the ‘bloodmobile’ system for collecting greater quantities of blood efficiently and safely.
In 1942, Dr Drew resigned from the American Red Cross in protest at the policy of separating blood from black people and white people, citing the fact that, obviously, there is no difference in blood between races: we all bleed red. I have been a paramedic for 24 years and your medical features are very interesting. I thought this might add to your already informative article.
Joel Peters via email
Ticket to Tempelhof
Taylor Downing’s article on the Berlin Airlift (MHM 151, April/May 2026) led me to recall a visit to West Berlin in November 1969 using the designated ‘air corridor’ from Hanover to Tempelhof Airport in the American Sector of West Berlin. Although the Airlift was long over, the Cold War was very much in existence, and all civilian air traffic had to use one of three air corridors to fly from West Germany to Berlin.
At that time, I was an employee of BEA (British European Airways, a forerunner of British Airways). I flew from Heathrow to Hanover and transferred to a BAC-111 – a rear-engined twin-jet airliner –
for the short flight along the air corridor, at the prescribed and rigidly controlled altitude of 12,000ft. After a short and very bumpy flight, we approached Tempelhof, flying closely between two large apartment blocks, and touched down on the short Nazi-era runway. Our jet liner taxied to the terminal and parked underneath the vast concrete roof, where we all disembarked, completely sheltere from the elements!
Roger Laing, Iver, Buckinghamshire
Historical fiction
Whilst I enjoyed the film Nuremberg (MHM 150, February/March 2026), the short sequence purporting to show the Hess flight was complete nonsense. A single-engined plane, Hess being beaten on arrival, then enjoying a Scotch with (presumably) the Duke of Hamilton, simply did not happen – if this was done sloppily, what else followed a similar approach? There are plenty of sources to refer to, so why not take a little more trouble and keep pedants like me happy?
John Harris, via email
Made in Crewe
I have just read the very interesting article on the Spitfire at 90 (MHM 150, February/March 2026), but it would be remiss of me not to draw your attention to the role that my hometown of Crewe played in this history.
In preparation for the potential war, Rolls-Royce and the government searched for a location for a shadow factory that could deliver the production of aero-engines, and landed on Crewe, with its excellent road and rail links. Crewe had extensive open farming land, and construction of the factory started on a 60-acre area on Merrill’s Farm in July 1938, with the first Merlin aero-engine rolling off the production line five months later. A total of 25,000 Merlin engines were produced, with 10,000 people employed at the factory’s peak in 1943. After the war, the factory was redirected to car production, and it is now the location of the world-famous Bentley Motors.
Simon Yates, Crewe, Cheshire
Images: provided by US National Library of Medicine; Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, photo: Willy Pragher
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