The Orphan Who Sailed the U-Boat Atlantic and Became a Disease Hunter | The Fourth Arm Ep 06

An orphan from Ripon, Wisconsin, found the one academy that would take a penniless kid and pay him to learn — in an advertisement in the back of a Popular Mechanics. His acceptance arrived the same day as his draft notice. The Fourth Arm tells the personal thread of the series: Ronald Mackenzie's cadet crossings of the U-boat Atlantic, the high-school diploma he never had, and the arc beyond the war — a University of Wisconsin M.D. and a career hunting viruses for the U.S. Public Health Service, the very service the merchant marine created in 1798. Family memory is labeled as family memory; the documented record is cited alongside it. Sources include family oral history (flagged as such) alongside academy and public-health records. ▶ Full series:    • The Fourth Arm: America's Merchant Marine ...   🔔 Subscribe:    / @letsrethinkhistory   Narrated by AI voices from sourced, human-reviewed research. #History #FourthArm #ReThinkHistory