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U-BOAT 156
THE ATTACK ON LAGO
REFINERY
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| The attack on the Lago Refinery by the German
U-Boat 156 began at 0121 hours on February 16, 1942 when Captain Hartenstein
ordered: "Fire Torpedo" and 48 seconds later the lake tanker
Pedernales
was hit in the side and exploded into a fire ball. |
| Two minutes later Captain Hartenstein ordered a
second torpedo launched. The second torpedo hit the lake tanker
Oranjestad
and it too became an inferno. |
| The German High Command had changed the original
orders under which Captain Hartenstein had sailed. The original orders
were to surface and shell the refinery with its 10.5 cm deck cannon.
On February 15, 1942 new orders were radioed to U-156 which read as follows: |
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1. The principal assignment is
to attack shipping targets.
2. If attacks on shipping were
successful, then the U-Boat could commence with artillery
attack against the land target.
After sinking the two lake tankers the U-Boat
surfaced, it was now three-quarters of a mile off the reef in front of the Lago
Refinery. The artillery attack on the well lit refinery would be over in
minutes. The Captain and crew were ecstatic, the U-Boat had made its first
kills and now they were to destroy the world's largest refinery. |
| Hatches were opened, men were on deck, the cannon
was loaded and the order was given to fire. As soon as the order was given
there was an explosion on deck, the dick gunner was killed instantly, the seaman
assisting the gunner was thrown against the conning tower, his leg shredded by
the explosion. In the excitement, the over-eager gunner had failed to
remove the plug from the end of the cannon barrel, and the muzzle of the 10.5 cm
deck cannon had exploded when the shell was fired. |
| Without the deck cannon there could be no artillery
attack on the refinery. |
| This attack caused the complete blackout of the
refinery and the Colony for the duration of the war. |
| In 1941 at the time of the attack the Lago
Refinery employed forty-seven hundred men and refined two hundred twenty eight
thousand barrels of crude a day. By the end of World War II the Lago
Refinery employment had reached over seven thousand and the refinery was
processing three hundred thousand barrels of crude a day. This works out
to half a million gallons of fuel an hour, twenty-four hours a day. The
Lago Refinery maintained this production without any down time for over five
years. |
| Had the deck gunner not made an error the
refinery could have been destroyed and this production lost. |
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HERE IS WHAT THE
LONDON TIMES SAID AT THE TIME |
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THE DAY HITLER LOST THE WAR |
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