SUBMARINES STRIKE ARUBA OIL PORT; TANKERS SUNK AND SET ABLAZE

ORANJESTAD, ARUBA, 1942-02-16. — German submarine attack brought the war to the oil anchorages of Aruba before dawn to-day, sinking the tanker Oranjestad and setting the Pedernales ablaze off San Nicolas. Another tanker, the Arkansas, was struck off the island’s western shore. Men have been killed in the attacks, and the immediate business of the port is rescue, the care of survivors, and the assessment of damage to ships upon which an important part of the Allied petroleum supply depends. The assault has struck not merely at vessels lying within reach of torpedoes, but at a compact and indispensable junction between the Venezuelan oilfields and the ocean routes.

The Pedernales and Oranjestad were attacked at the anchorage serving the Lago refinery at San Nicolas. The Pedernales, though grievously damaged and burning, has not been wholly lost; the Oranjestad has sunk. The distinction is important to those now reckoning the cost, for a tanker which can be saved represents both valuable carrying capacity and a possible return to service. For the crews, however, the first consequence was immediate peril from explosion, fire and oil upon the water. The attack on the Arkansas, near the Eagle refinery on the other side of Aruba, shows that the danger was not confined to a single anchorage.

Gunfire was also directed against the oil installations. The ships, rather than the great refining works, have borne the principal damage, and the attack must not be mistaken for the destruction of Aruba’s entire petroleum industry. Nevertheless, the distinction between an intact refinery and an uninterrupted oil supply is considerable. A refinery requires a continuing arrival of crude petroleum, storage into which its products may pass, and ships to carry those products away. Damage at any link can obstruct the others. To-day’s burning and disabled tankers demonstrate how an enemy unable to occupy the island may nevertheless interfere with its work.

Aruba’s importance is out of all proportion to its size. Lying close to the Venezuelan coast, this Netherlands island receives petroleum from the rich producing districts around Lake Maracaibo. The limitations of the lake’s entrance have helped create a special traffic in smaller tankers, which bring crude oil to the island for refining and transfer into the wider ocean trade. The Lago works at San Nicolas, associated with the Standard Oil interests of New Jersey, are among the great petroleum establishments of the world. The Eagle refinery gives the island a second substantial undertaking. Together they make this apparently remote Caribbean station a place of consequence to distant battlefields.

The ships employed in the short passage from Venezuela are therefore no mere local convenience. Their journeys connect wells and collecting stations with the industrial apparatus which makes crude petroleum useful to fleets, aircraft and armies. An ocean tanker cannot replace every vessel in this service simply by taking its berth, nor can the loss of trained officers and seamen be made good as readily as an entry in a shipping account. The immediate military question is protection of the approaches; the corresponding commercial question is whether the necessary succession of arrivals and departures can be maintained without exposing ship after ship to the same hazard.

American soldiers arrived in Aruba on February 11 to undertake the protection of these vital establishments, relieving British troops. To-day’s assault has thus followed within days of a change in the island’s garrison. The territory remains Dutch, while its defence and its oil trade concern several Allied Governments. The Netherlands, whose European homeland is occupied by Germany, continues the struggle through its Government in London and its overseas possessions. Here that struggle is joined directly to American military responsibility and to the requirements of British shipping. Defence ashore, however necessary against sabotage or a landing, cannot by itself keep submerged raiders away from tankers approaching an open anchorage.

For Washington, the attack supplies another sharp illustration of the reach of the submarine war into waters near the American continents. Since Germany and the United States entered a state of war in December, American shipping can claim no shelter in neutrality. President Roosevelt told his countrymen on December 9, “We are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows.” That pledge now has a very practical Caribbean meaning. Ships, fuel, harbour protection and the disposition of naval forces must be considered together. The presence of troops at an oil installation is only one part of the undertaking.

In the oil and shipping trades, the most immediate calculation is not simply the value of the petroleum burned. It is the cost of lost carrying capacity, damaged hulls, interrupted sailings and additional protection. A cargo safely refined but unable to leave port is not yet a supply delivered to the Allies. Nor does a plentiful source of crude oil guarantee that the necessary fuel will reach its destination at the required hour. Any judgment upon prices or insurance must distinguish these particular losses from the much greater question of whether the route can be kept working. The destruction of individual tankers is established; the duration of the interruption remains to be determined.

Britain’s demand for the products of such distant industrial stations has been plain throughout the war. In his broadcast of February 9 last year, Mr. Churchill appealed to America: “Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.” Petroleum belongs with those tools, although it is consumed rather than carried permanently into battle. An aeroplane delivered without a dependable supply of fuel is only a partial addition to fighting strength. The same is true of a warship or a motor column. The enemy’s attack upon Aruba is consequently an attack upon the means by which Allied industrial resources are translated into movement and military action.

The task ahead is to save what can be saved, restore the damaged shipping service, and make the next approach of a submarine more difficult. How many raiders are operating in these waters, and where another blow may fall, cannot safely be inferred from the wreckage at one port. The island’s refineries remain a prize worth defending and a target worth attacking. To-day has shown that distance from the principal land campaigns offers no assurance of quiet. Between the Venezuelan fields and the ships which carry their products overseas lies a narrow working chain; its protection has become an immediate business of the war.