The Bad British Fuel Myth was originated by Warren Bodie in his book "The Lockheed P-38 Lightning". Since the advent of the internet it has taken on a life of its own with various posters adding embellishments of their own such as "the lead was separating out in the fuel" "the fuel in the UK had a higher aromatic content" and other unsubstantiated statements.
The actual quote from Bodie is:
"Gasoline available in the MTO obviously came from a different source, probably direct from the U.S.A. And it is well known fact that fuel in the United Kingdom was of poor quality. If you remember that the Allisons were not turbocharged in any fighters except the P-38s and that no Merlin had such supercharging, it becomes rather evident that fuel quality could easily have been one of the most important culprits."
"It is the authors opinion that British fuels furnished to the eighth Air Force were improperly blended at the time and the tetraethyl lead compound was separating out from the gasoline in the Allison manifold."
That's it, all pure speculation with no footnotes or historical references, nothing to back it up. In fact I have yet to see a shred of evidence indicating the fuel in the UK was of any lesser quality than elsewhere. There is however plenty of evidence to show that there was no significant difference.
It is instructive to note that the definitive book on the Allison "Vees for Victory" by Daniel Whitney does NOT mention Bad British Fuel anywhere in its text.
A good discussion of Britain's avgas supplies is presented in "Britain War Machine" by David Edgerton. There is a chapter that discusses Britain's sources of supply in some detail. As he notes "
By the middle of the war nearly all of the aviation spirit, indeed nearly all the petroleum products, were to come from the USA"
Another good source is the Army Air Forces Historical Studies No 65 "Aviation Gasoline Production and Control which states:
"In addition, the British were asked to alter their fuel specifications to meet those of the U.S. Air Corps and Navy." (Dec 1941)
But let's ignore that, in the spirit of the underlying theme that the British were incompetent buffoons that couldn't do anything right, and assume their gasoline was inferior. That brings up the question of how much British fuel was there. The answer is: not much.
More than
85% of all high octane (or PN if you prefer) gasoline produced by the Western Allies (ie not including the USSR) was produced in the continental USA.
Before World War II the British had no oil industry to speak of. In 1938 (the last full year before the war) the only source of oil indigenous to the UK was Scottish shale oil, of which a total of 128,000 tons was produced. This represented
1.3% of the UK's total needs. In other words more than 98% of her oil was imported, making her the world's largest importer of oil by far. It should be noted that all shale oil was refined at the small refinery dedicated to the shale oil industry at Pumpherston in Scotland. This refinery did NOT produce avgas.
In 1939 Britain's first commercially viable oil field was discovered in Duke's Woods. Efforts were made during the war to develop these fields developed such that the total amount of UK oil produced had doubled by 1943, however demand had increased as well so UK contributions were still a drop in the bucket. Initially this crude oil was refined at Pumpherston, but later it was sent to the small Ellesmere Port lube oil refinery. Note that this refinery was also not equipped to produce avgas. In other words no avgas was produced using indigenous UK oil.
"The Production and Refining of Indigenous Oil in Britain" by B S Hoyle describes the history of the British oil industry prior to the discovery of North Sea oil. To get an idea of how insignificant UK production was, interesting to note that the UK oil fields produced about 3.5 million barrels of crude for the entire war which pales into insignificance when you realize the US was producing 3.8 million barrels A DAY in 1941.
Furthermore; in 1938 Britain was importing the majority of its oil as finished product. Half of the imports were in the form of what the British term motor spirit and aviation spirit (gasoline), a quarter in other refined products such a kerosene, diesel and fuel oil, with about a quarter arriving as crude oil.
There were only a 13 refineries in the UK ( vs ~400 in the US), 7 very small ones specializing in products such as bitumen (asphalt) and lube oils, the previously noted plant at Pumpherston and 5 larger ones (still small by US standards) relying on imported crude oil from Venezuela, the US and the Middle East. It is interesting to note that after the entry of the US into the war Britain actually shut down more than half of its refining capacity. Refinery throughput sank from 2,400,000 tons in 1938 to 908,000 tons in 1943!
Britain realized the importance of high octane avgas (PN of 100 or more) and placed a high priority on it. Since the British had no supplies of their and felt they could not rely on the neutrality leaning United States to sell them oil in a future war, they set up contracts with refineries in Aruba (Standard Oil of New Jersey), Curacao (Shell) and Trinidad using Venezuelan (and some Trinidad) oil. In addition the Anglo Persian Oil company (now BP) upgraded their large refinery in Abadan (Iran) and Shell added avgas capacity to their refineries in the Dutch East Indies.
Only one of the refineries in the UK was upgraded to produce 100 octane fuel (Stanlow). In addition 2 hydrogenation plants were built in the UK. The plant at Billingham used the same Bergius process used by the majority of German synthetic oil plants with one important difference; by the beginning of World War II it had switched from coal to creosote as its feedstock. The plant at Heysham hydrogenated gas oil (gas oil is the heavier faction produced by basic refining) that had been produced at the refinery in Trinidad. A planned third plant was canceled in favor of more US oil with the equipment shipped to Trinidad instead. Stanlow also used gas oil from Trinidad as its base stock.
After the US entry into the war there was a rationalization of the transportation of oil supplies to reduce the pressure on the limited number of oil tankers, many of which (approximately 10% of the fleet) had been quickly lost because of the US Navy's refusal to adopt the convoy system on the US east coast.
From "Aviation Gasoline Production and Control":
"For the sake of efficiency in distributing the insufficient supply, it was decided to allocate to the AAF the output of the Curacao and Trinidad refineries. This production was considered as a unit with the US Gulf Coat plants so as to relieve tankers for the Atlantic and Pacific ocean transportation. Thus arrangements were made to supply the AAF at Ponce in Puerto Rico and Jamaica from Curacao."
The Japanese graciously took the output of the Far East refineries, while much of Abadan's went to the USSR with the rest used in the Middle East and the CBI theater.
The 5 refineries producing avgas in the north east (Philadelphia, Linden NJ and Baltimore) were the closest supply to the UK but lost their source of crude oil from Venezuela. To compensate former product lines to the west were reversed to import crude from the mid-west. In addition, every oil tank car was gathered up and placed into dedicated trains transshipping Texas and Oklahoma crude to these refineries and barges were seconded to this service. The ultimate solution was to build the Big Inch Pipeline (completed August 1943) to transport the crude, but even this was not enough resulting in the construction of the Little Big Inch specifically to expedite the transport of finished product (primarily avgas) produced in Texas and Louisiana to the UK.
In 1944 the three UK plants produced approximately 3% of the Western Allies high octane production. Due to the combined bomber offence, the UK was by far the largest consumer outside of the continental USA, taking about 27% of the Western Allies production (again not including the USSR). This means less than 15% of the Avgas consumed in the UK (by both the RAF and USAAF) was produced in the 3 UK plants. In other words, the British couldn't begin to meet the RAF's needs, let alone supply the USAAF. Note that in late 1943 and 1944 Billingham was producing 150 PN which was never used in P-38s.
As noted in "Army Air Forces in World War II" by Craven and Cates Volume 2
"Virtually all of the gasoline used in the United Kingdom from 1942 to 1945 came from American sources. The British were responsible for gasoline supply to the Middle East and China –Burma –India theaters."
If British avgas was somehow "bad,' and there is not an iota of evidence to support this, the P-38 only had a 1 in 7 chance of receiving it. Judging by the enormous numbers of V-1710 failures someone must have been making a special effort to ensure the P-38 units were fueled exclusively with it.
To get an idea of the production imbalance in favor of the USA download the document "Official Munitions Production of the United States By Months, July 1, 1940- August 31, 1945" which contains a table showing the month by month production of avgas in the US as compared to foreign production.
Official munitions production of the United States by months, July 1, 1940 - August 31, 1945. :: World War II Operational Documents
By the way, there's a lot of other fascinating material in this document.
In any event the basic premise of Bad British Fuel as the cause of the Allison failures is bogus. The Allison's problems were NOT limited to the ETO. This part of the myth was debunked by Daniel Whitney (author of Vees for Victory, the very comprehensive book on the V-1710) in the in his article "The Allison Time Bomb" in Volume 1 Number 2 of the "Torque Meter"
"Not long after the introduction of the P-38J pilots in all theaters began experiencing unexpected and sudden failures of their engines."
"The entire topic is further complicated because of the common impression that the failures occurred only in the ETO, so the problem "must have been poor quality British fuel" or the "low temperature at the high operating altitudes over the Continent."
He goes on to describe in some detail the problems experienced in the CBI.
The mode of failure was consistent. The outer most cylinders (1 and 6) received too rich a mixture, while the inner two (3 and 4) received too lean a mixture. The result was a failure of number 3 and 4 cylinders. This is can only be attributed to a flaw in the design. Looking at the intake manifold it is easy to see why. The air/fuel mixture has a straight shot into the number one cylinder while it has to make an abrupt 180 degree turn to reach the number 3 cylinder. The heavier than air fuel will tend to keep going in a straight line thus robbing the inner cylinders of enough fuel to avoid catastrophic consequences.
Due to the flow split and the two very tight elbows that I mentioned in a previous post, the fuel was separating out and pooling in the intake. This phenomenon was studied by the SAE in 1914! (the SAE paper is attached).
By the way the "Madame Queen" manifold is not a "turbulator" or a flow straighter (two diametrically opposed concepts) it is a second carburetor which uses its venturi to draw up and re-vaporize the fuel that has pooled at the bottom of the intake.
It should be noted that while the Allisons were blowing up at an incredible rate the RAF was at the same time engaged in the Battle of Berlin and as a consequent Merlins were flying thousands of sorties (>10,000) in four engine bombers to greater ranges without any reports of excessive failures. Not to mention the large numbers of sorties flown by R-1820s, R-1830s, R-2800s and V-1650s flying similar missions in that time frame. Applying Occam's Razor leads to the conclusion that the fuel wasn't at fault.
The venturi manifold was
not designed in response to the crisis in the UK. The manifold had already designed and entered into production before the P-38 flew any missions over Germany. The first engines equipped with the new manifold were accepted by the AAF on November 28, 1943 at which time P-38 had only flown 7 missions over Germany and had only suffered 7 losses in total. Allison knew they had a problem before the P-38s went to the UK. As Dan Whitney notes "
Allison had previously realized that operations in very cold conditions were causing fuel condensation and so had introduced the new venturi gas pipe as a fix late in the fall." (fall of 1943) . In Vees for Victory there are references to experiments being conducted on Allison engines in early 1943 to improve manifold design. As noted in this book the history of the development of the V1710 is a constant struggle to fix its fuel distribution problems. In fact the book states that the venturi pipe was designed as far back as December 1939 in an unsuccessful attempt to solve the even worse fuel distribution problems of the V-3420.
The fact that Allison had to resort to such a power robbing device shows how serious the problem was. It's ironic to note that at the same time that Rolls Royce was concentrating their efforts on cleaning up the intake tract to reduce pressure loses and therefore free up wasted horsepower, Allison was headed in the opposite direction cluttering up their intake with a loss inducing device such as a venturi.
Meanwhile, as Whitney notes, in January 1944 Lockheed instituted an accelerated test program on the opposite side of the earth in sunny, warm California. "The Battle of San Fernando Valley". The 3 P-38J-15's involved blew up 14 engines! At least 2 of these had the venturi intake. It should be noted that air temperature at 25,000 feet is just as cold over Southern California in the summer as it is in England in the winter. It's always cold at 25,000 feet, and any design that doesn't take that into account has failed.
In summary:
- The amount of bona fide British oil was insignificant.
- What relatively small quantities of British avgas that were produced met the same specifications as all avgas.
- The P-38 suffered problems all over the world.
- The problems had surfaced well before P-38s flew any missions over Germany
- As noted in a previous post, aromatics were added to US produced avgas in order to increase production well before the Allison started blowing up over Europe