[emersonbiggins]

Great story about how the energy came about that helped the Allies win WW2. (emphasis mine)

Oil Patch Warrior
Brit shows film about oil men who aided U.K. during WWII

By Sheila Robinson, Staff Writer
The Daily Ardmoreite
Posted May 05, 2008 @ 09:07 AM
Ardmore, OK —

Many years ago, a group of 44 Ardmore oil field workers went to England to help drill for oil.

The project was a closely guarded secret until 1944. Kevin Topham of the United Kingdom was in Ardmore on Friday to say thank you. A luncheon was presented by the Ardmore Chamber of Commerce at the Greater Southwest Historical Museum honoring the Ardmore oilmen and Topham.

Topham gave a special presentation of a film about the Oil Patch Warrior produced by the British Broadcasting Co.

“It’s only about six months old and it features quite a lot about when your American people came over and saved the day for the U.K. when they drilled for oil,” Topham said. “They doubled production in the U.K. in 1943.”

Oil became the lifeblood of the second World War. Without it, Britain would have become defenseless. The Germans developed the U-boat and circled the British Isles sinking supply vessels and essential oil tankers.

The British decided to drill for oil in Duke’s Wood and the location became known as one of Sir Winston Churchill’s greatest secrets, according to Topham.

When oilmen on the East Coast of America turned down British petroleum representative Sir Phillip Southwell, he came knocking on Lloyd Noble’s door. Noble agreed to help and his company, Noble Drilling, was designated as project manager.

“We probably would have lost the war without that crude oil,” Topham said. “When it was refined into petrol and diesel, it was pumped via 28 pipelines, which were laid under the channel to the French ports of Cherbourg and Calais in preparation for D-Day.”

Without the oil products, no tank could run and no plane would fly.

“Without that fuel, which was pumped through at a volume of a million gallons a day, we would not have been able to advance as Gen. Patton did with his tanks,” Topham said. “It was imperative, and it was mainly due to the 44 drillers which hailed from Ardmore who were responsible for getting this crude oil out.”

The Ardmore oilmen doubled production in 12 months. Topham said they did a brilliant job.
...

The Daily Ardmoreite (Okla.)

The CTG vs. crude oil debate is one that, IMHO, was settled in Europe over 60 years ago.

[dorlomin]

http://www.dukeswoodoilmuseum.co.uk/

[Pops]

In those days the US was the OPEC of oil, Japan probably wouldn't have attacked us had we not cut them off.

Not much changes huh?

[emersonbiggins]

In those days the US was the OPEC of oil, Japan probably wouldn't have attacked us had we not cut them off.

Not much changes huh?

Nope - resource wars aren't all that new a phenomenon - as old as empire, itself, in fact.

[anarky321]

roman armies ran on gold and salt

[MattSavinar]

Daniel Yergin is, of couse, a fool these days but his book covered this quite well as did the documentary that was made out of it:

The Untold Story of Oil in World War II
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Pos ... Story.html

Interesting factoid: the british were out numbered 3-to-1 at the Battle of Britain. The main reason they were able to kick so much ass despite the numbers was a new, higher octane, form of jet fuel had just been developed in the states. That's what was used to fuel the Spitfires which gave them such a higher degree of maneuverability while the German planes were running on really low quality crapola by comparison.

[emersonbiggins]

Thanks, Matt. I wasn't aware of Yergin having wrote about it, though I am aware of some of his other "work" - 3.16 Yergins and counting...

[dorlomin]

In those days the US was the OPEC of oil, Japan probably wouldn't have attacked us had we not cut them off.

Not much changes huh?

I am not sure. The US cut of oil to Japan because of the Japanese occupation of Indochina, the French colony. The US and Japan had been squaring up in the Pacific basicaly since the US took over the Philipeans. (There was even a hostility before then).

A part of it stemed from the UK\ Japanese alliance. During the runup to the Washington naval treaty in 1922 the UK and US were seeing each other as natural enemies in the Pacific, Japan was very closely allied to the UK. The Washington Naval treaty explicity broke the alliance between the UK and Japan amoung many other compromises to keep the Imperialist hot heads in London and Washington from ending up at war with each other. An exeptionaly sucessful treaty although it left the allies hamstrung on ship numbers in the run up to WWII.

Japanse had already seazed Formosa and Korea by the outbreak of WWI: it was clearly a very expansionist power.

The invasion of China set it on a collision course with the US where neither side was willing to back down. It was almost bound to end in war. America's expansion east was looking closely at China, not to occupy but to acess as a market and for resources.

Roosevelt was goading Japan to take the final step the same way he was goading Hitler with his support for the UK.

Not to say that oil was unimportant in WWII. WWII was an oil war. The first nation to truly grasp this was the UK. I dont think the Germans every fully grapsed this fact. They were too wedded to the Nazi ideologies and some of there batshit crazy ideas.

There submarine war docrine was inherently flawed in thinking that a ship is a ship is a ship. They run a tonnage war counting a ton as a ton where ever it sank. They had uboate running around the Caribean sinking boats full of bananas when tankers were getting through to the UK. The battle of the Atlantic is a deeply misunderstood battle. By late 1941 the RN and RCN had the battle well in hand and the problem contained. This was in no small part due to the USN talking half the Atlantic out of the battle with its protection of convoys *tips hat to where its due yanks*. The big scale sinking in 1942 were largely in the US end of the pond due to lack of convoys and escorts, given what was on the ship slipways in Germany, the UK and US the outcome was never in any real doubt. An oil aware Germany would not have run up those impressive numbers but stuck doggedly to sinking tankers on the aproaches to the UK. I know some tankers were sunk in the 'second happy time' but not enough to really matter.

Hell had Hitler understood oil war the day after Paris fell he would have been planning an invasion of Greece. Bulgaria > Greece > Crete >Cyprus >Syria > Iraq > Iran. Titting around with Sealion was pure hubris. A reasonably strong wind in the Channel (sea state 4) and his invasion fleet would have sunk without a shot being fired. Churchill new it was an oil war. Churchill new all about oil wars in 1911 when he was First Lord of the Admiralty and with mad Admiral Jackie Fisher created the first oil fuelled dreadnoughts (Queen Elizibeth class) with the help of Anglo-Persian oil (now BP).

[kokoda]

One of the reasons that the Japanese turned to using Kamikazes was because they had more aircraft and pilots than they had fuel.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

One of the reasons that the Japanese turned to using Kamikazes was because they had more aircraft and pilots than they had fuel.

Yes, although the term 'pilot' might be a stretch, since they didn't have the fuel to train them in the first place.

[dorlomin]

Interestingly the Tiger turned out to be a rational choice of tank design in some respects, although by accident. Germany was short of oil and manpower but had large amounts of coal and iron. The tiger used a pretty huge amount of iron to protect the manpower inside it but had an engine that was simply not up to the job so had a short engine life. The use of the Tiger tended to be to bring it up to the battle area by train (coal) and use it as a short ranged mobile pill box rather than as a manuevering tank. This was largely an accident of the habit of dictatorships to go for showey gianticism but worked rather well for them.