Very last files UK National Archives plans to digitalize : FO 370/926, futile appeals from abroad for British penicillin

The very last files that the UK National Archives plans to digitalize and put on line won't be the ultra-secret Ultra files . Trust me : Ultra was a success.

No the very last files, if ever, to be digitalized and put on line will be the series FO (Foreign Office) 370/926 : requests from aboard , 1944-1945, for that wonderful British invention , penicillin.

That's because what should have been the greatest success for the UK in WWII turned out to be their worst total balls-up disaster.

Penicillin Diplomacy comes to Cuba November 12 1943

Batista wooed by PENICILLIN

An American warplane flies south throughout the night in November 1943, all in an effort to deliver scarce American government penicillin to save the life of a small son of Cuban lawyer Angel Diaz Soto.

The effort is widely reported in all the semi-official American media such the New York Times, media that were read all around the world by government elites seeking to discern the attitudes of the largest member of the rising Allied powers of World War Two.

This particular tea leaf wasn't hard to read : penicillin was no longer to be a secret weapon of war, just for American soldiers ; but now was to be an instrument of peace , open to all the nations of the world willing to take up the yoke of defeating the evil Nazis.