The Navy's base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is a bulwark of the United States defenses in the Caribbean area, an area described by naval historians as the "strategic key of two great oceans."  Personnel from the base were kidnapped Friday by Cuban rebels.

The historic base commands the Windward Passage approach to the Panama Canal, 696 miles away.

Guantanamo is a familiar port of call to great numbers of Navy service men on reserve training cruises.  The base, near the eastern tip of Cuba's south coast, was one of the two Caribbean points to which additional United States forces were sent on emergency, stand-by status last month during the attacks in Venezuela on Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

Two companies of paratroopers were flown to Puerto Rico an two companies of Marines were sent to Guantanamo to be ready for quick dispatch to Caracas in the event the Venezuelan Government asked aid to curb violence.

The Guantanamo base, 572 miles from Havana, surrounds a sheltered inlet about twelve miles long and up to five miles wide.  It totals 36,000 acres, but 22,600 of these are water and salt flats.  The site, wrested in battle form Spain in 1898, was rented in 1903 from Cuba under a lease calling for the payment of $2,000 a year.

Guantanamo Bay was originally named Cumberland Bay in 1741, when an English force landed there to march on Santiago.  The town of Guantanamo was founded by French colonists fleeing from Haiti, who called their new settlement Santa Catalina del Saltadero del Guaso.  Before the establishment of the naval base, the region reflected an old French-Creole atmosphere, and it was once a summer retreat for Havana's fashionable families.

At the outset of the emergency period prior to World War II, facilities in existence at Guantanamo Bay consisted of a naval station equipped with shops, storehouses, barracks, two small Marine railways, a Marine Corps training station and an airfield.

A crash program of construction and enlargement of vital facilities was undertaken to convert the base into a major bulwark.  In a short time it became a fleet-operating area large enough to accommodate simultaneously most of the vessels of the United States Navy.  The peak of operational activity was reached during 1944, by which time the German U-boat menace in the Caribbean area had been almost completely eliminated.

The emergency construction at Guantanamo included new runways, administrative buildings, hangers, fuel-storage tanks, extra moorings for battleships, cruisers and destroyers, an underground hospital, ship repair facilities and new barracks.

It is estimated that there are 2,000 to 3,000 officers and enlisted men stationed at Guantanamo.  This does not include the shifting complement of men from ships in port.