Recent content by gavinb

Micdrow, Please re-read my posts, and particularly the last one. I am surprised and disappointed to see exactly when and where the prospect of censorship by moderators in this thread has actually appeared. This has nothing to do with 'insults' or ad-hominems, at least from my end...

Micdrow, In threads on the use of 100-octane fuel in the Battle of Britain hosted on this site, the poster known as Kurfurst has, aside from accusing me of making false claims; 1. Misrepresented and selectively distorted the results of my published work (in 'Hurricane vs.Bf-110' thread, on 1...

Dear 'Kurfurst'. In response to your claims that I am impersonating myself, I would like to point out that my contact details (including an email and postal address) have been publicly-available since the publication of the relevant article, e.g. on the EHR website, here - The Narrow Margin...

Merlin, Re: the Spitfire stats: 100-octane gave no benefit in performance above the full-throttle height of the engine, hence the maximum speed figures at 20,000 ft (about 1,000 - 2,000 ft above the FTH of the Merlin III engines used by Spitfire I and Hurricane I's in the BoB). It did...

Merlin, the sources quoted from the PRO AVIA 10 series come from Freeman's papers at the PRO, and date from his time as Air Member for Development and Production on the Air Council; this is one of the main sources for Anthony Furse's biography which you refer to. I referred to the relevant...

Mike, thank you for the kind words, but even more for the evidence on the operational use of the fuel you have posted here (thanks also to Glider in that respect). I must admit, my intentions in my article were simply to challenge the perceived impact of 100-octane in the BoB and also the...

Kurfurst, I'm afraid a lengthy response on the responsible handling of historical evidence appears to be required. Quoting, at second-hand, a secondary source as a reference which cannot be traced or supported by any primary source evidence is not sufficient to overcome the wealth of primary...

Glider, interesting posts. Re: December 1939 decisions. I'd have to revisit the PRO to be definite about this, however: My notes indicate that the position in December was that the 'roll-out' of 100-octane remained at ACAS' discretion, and this was issued in February subject to...

For a start you need to research the decisions made on the 7th, 8th and 9th Meetings of the Air Ministry's Oil Co-ordinating Policy Committee on 18th May, 29th June and 10th August 1940, respectively. These can be found in AVIA 10/282 at the Public Records Office, Kew. I believe this source is...

As the author of the EHR article in question, I would like to clarify two points. 1. The March 1939 decision over the use of 100-octane fuel was a pre-war plan which simply indicates that the RAF had begun stockpiling and planning the use of 100-octane fuel before the crisis of 1940 and that...