Shell at war. (History).(Shell Company of Australia)

THE PACIFIC WAR was largely about oil. Japan, under the control of a militarist clique that had steadily become more aggressive since the Depression, captured the oil- and rubber-producing lands of what are now Indonesia and Malaysia while the colonial powers, Britain and the Netherlands, were absorbed in Europe--Britain fighting Nazi Germany almost alone and the Netherlands itself conquered. The audacious Japanese strategy was next to weaken or possibly even occupy Australia so that it could not be used as a base to drive the Japanese out of the oil and rubber territories. It was oil, too, that fuelled the Japanese ships, aircraft and vehicles for the drive south and in turn the successful Allied defence that drove them back to the home islands.

The Shell Company of Australia and other oil companies played a crucial role in thwarting Japanese designs on Australia and in the eventual defeat of militarist Japan. Shell was the biggest supplier of oil products to the Australian military, and one of the biggest to the American and other Allied armed forces which won the Pacific War. Its products powered and lubricated the military fighters, bombers and transport aircraft which fought the war in the skies; the naval vessels which won on the sea; and the many transport craft which carried soldiers and their supplies to key war theatres in Papua New Guinea, Borneo, Timor, Singapore, the Malay Peninsula and elsewhere.

Queensland was the frontline state for the Australian war effort. Townsville and Cairns were the main Shell fighting terminals, with Brisbane and country depots backing them up. The war came right into Townsville harbour in July 1942, when a Japanese bomber apparently aimed at the Shell depot on Magazine Island--but dropped the bomb a second too soon and it fell less than half a kilometre out to sea. "If the bomb had hit its target, it would have been catastrophic," John Mason, a draftsman at Shell's Townsville office, who also supervised tanker discharges, recalled years later. The target it missed was a forty-four-metre diameter aviation fuel tank, not far from ships moored at the wharf. The raid, though an isolated nuisance incident, unlike the heavy and repeated bombing of Darwin, was one of many reminders to oil depot workers that they were at war.

On 3rd March 1942, six Japanese Zero fighters attacked Broome harbour in Western Australia when Qantas flying boats and US and Dutch aircraft were landing evacuees from conquered Indonesia. Arthur ("Bluey") Munro, Shell's aircraft refuelling expert in Western Australia, and his assistant, Maurie Castledean, were refuelling a Qantas flying boat from a power barge. While the fighter machine-guns blazed, Munro sprang aboard the eighteen-foot launch attached to the barge and picked up survivors struggling in the water, saving an estimated forty or more lives. "It all happened so quickly," he said. "I didn't have time to think."

The ordinary business of the oil industry ceased for the duration of the war. Shell and other oil companies harnessed themselves to the Allied defence machine. All petroleum products coming into the country were pooled and allocated either for direct defence use or for priority civilian work.

Preparations for mobilisation of the oil industry for defence purposes commenced early in 1939 as tension mounted in Europe. Early measures included discussions with defence authorities regarding the recording of oil stocks, and plans for improved guarding and fire protection at the depots. Germany invaded Poland on 1st September 1939 and the Allies declared war against Germany on 3rd September. Extra guarding and lighting, camouflage of tanks and other preliminary defence steps began throughout the oil industry. Price control was introduced in mid-September. This was still the "phony war" period, when there was little fighting even in Europe after the German conquest of Poland. However, there was no phony war at sea, as Shell tanker crews found out when German U-boats attacked them.

In Australia, control over the industry deepened in 1940, with intensification of the war in the northern spring. Germany overran the Netherlands, Belgium and France. British forces were evacuated from the continent at Dunkirk. Ferocious Nazi bombing of Britain followed. And then in June 1940 Mussolini's Italy joined Germany. The war spread to North Africa, and Australian troops joined Britain and her Allies in the fight to defend the Suez Canal, Australia's economic lifeline.