The British Isles required four oil tankers of petroleum daily during the early war years, and most of it came from Venezuela, through Curaçao, after Italy blocked passage through the Mediterranean Sea from the Middle East. The refinery at Pointe-à-Pierre on Trinidad was the largest in the British Empire and Lago Oil and Transport Company was another large refinery on Dutch-owned Aruba. The Royal Dutch Shell refinery on Dutch-owned Curaçao was processing eleven million barrels per month, more than any other other oil refinery in the world at that time. The Caribbean was strategically significant because of Venezuelan oil fields in the southeast and the Panama Canal in the southwest. Improved Allied anti-submarine warfare eventually drove the Axis submarines out of the Caribbean region. They sank shipping in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico and attacked coastal targets in the Antilles. German U-boats and Italian submarines attempted to disrupt the Allied supply of oil and other material. The Battle of the Caribbean refers to a naval campaign waged during World War II that was part of the Battle of the Atlantic, from 1941 to 1945.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |