TDIH: The "Roughnecks of Sherwood Forest"

A year-long secret mission: Drilling oil in England

On or around this day in 1944, the so-called “roughnecks of Sherwood Forest” return home. They’d just finished a year-long, secret mission: They’d been drilling oil in England.

When they returned, there was no fanfare. Most people didn’t know what they’d done, yet victory in World War II might have been impossible without them.

It all began with the German U-boats: They were sinking too many oil tankers early in the war. Making matters worse, the Luftwaffe was destroying huge reserves of oil in British ports.

Something had to be done.

The British Oil Control Board held an emergency meeting, but few could predict what was going to come next. Philip Southwell of the D’Arcy Oil Company was in attendance, and he had a rather unexpected solution.

His company had discovered an oil field beneath Sherwood Forest. The heavily wooded location would shield the operation from the prying eyes of the Luftwaffe. But Southwell had a problem: The oilfield’s production, with only 50 shallow wells, was rather modest.

More equipment—and more expertise—was needed to increase production.

Southwell was secretly dispatched to America, where he sought help from four of our oil companies. Two California companies declined immediately. Two others hesitated but ultimately cited other commitments.

But Southwell thought he saw something in the eyes of Lloyd Noble of Noble Drilling. He traveled to Noble’s hometown in Oklahoma, ready to try again.

When Southwell appeared on Noble’s doorstep one weekend morning in September 1942, Noble was still in his pajamas.

“Stirred by patriotic fervor, unable to resist the lure of a challenge or perhaps just impressed by Southwell’s persistence in chasing him across the country,” former Noble Corporation CEO Jim Day writes, “Noble told Southwell that if [Frank Porter of Fain-Porter Drilling] would join in, Noble Drilling would commit.”

He didn’t want profits. He wanted to contribute to the wartime effort.

Which is why 42 American oil drillers, derrickhands, and others secretly boarded RMS Queen Elizabeth on March 12, 1943. Four drilling rigs would follow on separate ships.

Once in England, the roughnecks were housed at an old Anglican monastery, which they found hilarious. “Well, we heard we was going to be staying in this English monastery,” Oklahoman Lewis Dugger laughed years later, “and we thought, uh-huh, what’s this gonna be? Are we gonna be converted?”

The sudden influx of Americans in the area was addressed in a quintessentially American way. A rumor was planted and grew: The Americans were filming a movie, a Western. John Wayne would soon be there, too!

Just a year later, the American workers, with their more innovative and efficient methods, had finished 106 wells, 94 of which were producing. Production in Sherwood Forest had increased tenfold.

“There’s no way Britain could have won that war on the amount of oil they could get out,” Dugger concluded. “We drilled a lot of wells, and drilled them real quick.”

Yes, they did. And they did it despite wartime rationing of fuel, food, and supplies.

The roughnecks’ story was largely unknown until a 1973 book brought it to light. Guy Woodward & Grace Steele Woodward’s The Secret of Sherwood Forest: Oil Production in England During World War II finally shone a light on the efforts of these unsung heroes.

The story was long overdue. After all, the “roughnecks of Sherwood Forest” were more than oil men in those months. They were as necessary to the war effort as the soldiers and pilots whose planes they fueled.

Does the Greatest Generation ever stop surprising us? Yet another marvelous way in which they stood up and did what had to be done.

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