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The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 1.Â
Posted by Tim of Acleah (U1736633) on Thursday, 17th November 2011
This is linked to other threads that i have started relating to the logistics aspects of WW2 which i appreciate will probably only be of interest to a few. this is looking at the RAF's lack of facilities for storage of aviation fuel in 1936 and in particular of storage that was protected from aerial attack.
As a result of the ‘ten year rule’, as well as the RAF being inadequately equipped with mainly obsolete and obsolescent aircraft, only very limited stocks of aviation gasoline were held at a relatively few RAF stations. In addition the only reserves available were those held by the oil companies as a condition of Air Ministry contracts for the supply and distribution of fuel to the RAF. These reserves amounted to about 8,000 tons and even then this was estimated to represent only ten days war consumption. It is not clear what the government expected to happen once those ‘ten days’ of reserves were exhausted. In fact war time consumption of aviation spirits was to peak at about 8,000 tons per day so the total reserves up to 1936 would in fact have only been only enough for one day of war! It was in 1936 that the first flight of the Spitfire took place and now the RAF planned for squadrons of Hurricanes and Spitfires. However, these fighters would need fuel which would require storage facilities. Unlike in World War One that storage would need to be protected against aerial bombardment. In 1936 the vast majority of oil storage depots belonging to both the navy and to the oil companies consisted of unprotected and densely packed above ground storage tanks. By comparison with the very limited RAF storage, by 1936 the Royal Navy had, world wide, three million tons of storage held, not surprisingly, at or near ports.
The vast majority of commercial storage space was also held at ports in enormous above ground cylindrical tanks, which were typically sited close to conspicuous landmarks and made easy targets for air attack. About a third of the country’s civil oil storage was situated along the Thames Estuary. In July 1936 the Air Raid Precautions Department of the ±«Óãtv Office concluded that ‘it is perfectly plain that if a determined attack was made on these installations nothing could save them’. It also concluded that similar oil storage facilities on the Humber and along Southampton Water were equally vulnerable.
The same month the Air Council, with the approval of the Oil Board, decided to build storage facilities with a capacity of 90,000 tons. This was at the time estimated to be sufficient for three months of war and was to be carried out through the expansion of storage facilities on existing oil company commercial sites. One month later the Committee of Imperial Defence advised all the Service Departments to build up reserves such that they had sufficient fuel stocks for six months of war with Germany. As a result Air Ministry requirement were increased to 290,000 tons based on a daily consumption of 1,600 tons per day. This requirement, when met, would amount to a 3,600 per cent increase in stocks from the actual position in 1936.
Planning on the construction of large Aviation Fuel Reserve Depots (AFRD) started in 1937 and construction on the first of these started in February 1938 at Micheldever in Hampshire on the London Waterloo to Southampton railway line. The Air Ministry continued to escalate its storage requirements to 410,000 and then 800,000 tons. By the autumn of 1938 work commenced on a series of smaller storage depots designated as Aviation Fuel Distribution Depots (AFDD). These were to be located close to the airfields. Despite the Munich Agreement being claimed by Chamberlain to have given the UK ‘peace in our time’, floodlights were erected that the construction of the tanks and the associated depot facilities could continue late into the evenings during the winter of 1938/9.
It was not until March 1939 that the first of the AFDDs were filled with aviation gasoline, but more became operational in June July and August. The Micheldever AFRD became operational in September, the month when war with Germany broke out. Micheldever was rail fed, with distribution by both road and rail. In addition construction had started on a large number of other storage depots which were yet to be completed.
TimLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 2
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 20th November 2011
Tim,
Very interesting and informative contribution... Please continue.
I don't entirely agree that the RAF was equipped with "inadequate and obsolescent" aircraft in 1936. Of course they were rather old-fashioned by later standards. But the Gauntlet and Fury were good fighters by the standards of the day, and probably more than match for the German He 51 and Ar 68. Bombers such as the Heyford and the Hendon certainly looked obsolescent compared to the DC-2, but air forces everywhere were struggling to cope with the new technological trends. The German equipment of the time, the Ju 52 and Do 11, also left a lot to be desired. (Only the USAAC had a modern bomber in service in reasonable numbers, the Martin B-10.) There was an inevitable problem that the expansion of the RAF resulted in large orders for aircraft that would be obsolescent when they were delivered. Nominally combat aircraft, these were in reality more intended as operational trainers. Meanwhile, the sheer numbers had a soothing effect on a worried public.Link to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 3
Posted by Tim of Acleah (U1736633) on Monday, 21st November 2011
MM
Your comment about the aircraft with which the RAF is noted and I claim no expertese in that matter. I did say that it was mainly equipped rather than entirely but certainly the view that i expressed reflected the impression that I had gained from general reading on the period up to WW2.
regards
TimLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 4
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Monday, 21st November 2011
Tim :
Given that the gestation time of new aircraft, particularly in peacetime, tends to be extensive, it's still true that by 1935 the last of the biplane fighters (Gloster Gladiator) and the Hurricane were well on the way to being introduced, as was the Bristol Blenheim - indeed, some of Chamberlain's apologists claim that "peace in our tiime" did give enough breathing space for these types to become operational, and for the inception of the programme of building the Flower class corvettes which played such a large role, if only in numerical terms, in securing the seas for the transport of the fuel to fill the facilities you describe.
Incidentally, I've several times encountered claims that the majority of that fuel came from the Americas, not, as is often averred, the Middle East. Have your researches shed any light on this?Link to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 5
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 21st November 2011
Tim
I too enjoyed reading your OP.. I consulted "The Private Papers of Hore Belisha" to see whether I could add anything.. and found- as your OP stated- that people were more focussed on the discussing the hardware.. Perhaps to some degree, however, unless I have forgotten vital elements of your OP the challenge over the fuel supplies was more the logistical one of just getting it done.. For many of the pieces of hardware the design and invention challenges were possibly more cutting edge.
CassLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 6
Posted by Tim of Acleah (U1736633) on Tuesday, 22nd November 2011
Ur
Concerning Chamberlain. By the Munich agreement he was not trying to buy time but to avoid war completely. I consider that the situation in 39 was overall worst than it would have been in 38 if we had gone to war then, but that is another matter.
Concerning fuel supplies to the UK. Between March and may 1940 48% can from the Caribean area (Trinidad, Venezula and Dutch West Indies), 17% from the USA and from Iran, 11% from the Eastern Med (Iraq via pipeline and Romania) and 7% from elsewhere.
By comparison between June and Nov 1941 they were Caribean 42% USA 55% other 3%.
regards
TimLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 7
Posted by Tim of Acleah (U1736633) on Tuesday, 22nd November 2011
Cass
I should explain that my original post was parts from a book I have been writing for some time on the history of the government storage and pipeline system, starting before the war and hopefully going through to the present time. I have currently written 6 chapters with the 7th nearly complete and going up to around 1970.
In my post I left out a lot of the detailed information on the construction of the tanks as I was unable to include either my footnotes or the photos that I have of the tanks being constructed. the design and construction of the tanks (there were a number of differnt types) was certainly a challenge.
regards
TimLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 8
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 22nd November 2011
Tim
Thank you for that.. It explains perhaps why there was no obvious discussion "tag" in the OP..
I do not know enough about tank construction to know whether this was a "cutting edge" challenge or not. As I am not an engineer I would tend to think that once shipbuilders had perfected water-tight iron hulls for ships making large metal constructions to hold-in potentially powerful liquids- rather than hold them out was an established art.
But no doubt "ignorance is bliss".
CassLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 9
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Tuesday, 22nd November 2011
The biggest problem with the equipment of the RAF in 1936 was that it was designed for a war with France. Before 1933, Germany was not a significant threat, making France the most likely enemy, and therefore the measure of a bomber's radius of action was the distance to Paris. 600 miles was thought to be sufficient range for a bomber.
In 1936 the RAF had 25 squadrons equipped with light bombers, notable the Hawker Hart and its many derivatives. Staff analysis had found that fast light bombers were preferable over heavier and slower twin-engined types, because they could deliver the same bomb load more effectively. It was late 1935 before the Chief of the Air Staff asked for a review of policy in the context of a possible war with Germany. An important consequence of this was an increase in the minimal range requirement to the 2000 miles (with bomb load) thought to be needed for a war with Germany, as industrial targets in Eastern Germany were 700 miles away. That required a bigger bomber with much better defensive armament.
The Hart /Hind family had a range of only 430 miles, and the twin-engined Overstrand of 545 miles. Even the "heavy" bombers of 1936 lacked the range to effectively attack targets in Germany: The Heyford had a range of 930 miles. The handful of Hendon bombers were significantly better at 1360 miles, but the RAF was waiting for the next generation of bombers, which would enter service in the next year, so it did not order any more Hendons.
As far as the RAF was concerned, war in 1939 was certainly better than war in 1938. At the time of the Munich crisis, most of the bomber force was still equipped with aircraft that were useless for a war with Germany, and the few squadrons that had more modern equipment were not properly trained. It was a force in full transformation: In the middle of 1937 RAF Bomber Command was a biplane force, in late 1939 it was completely reequipped.Link to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 10
Posted by Triceratops (U3420301) on Friday, 25th November 2011
Incidentally, I've several times encountered claims that the majority of that fuel came from the Americas, not, as is often averred, the Middle East. Have your researches shed any light on this?
Ur,
According to this link, the Allies consumed 7 billion barrels of oil of which 6 billion were American;
note also the need for oil in the manufacture of synthetic rubber and toluene.
a bit more about the Big Inch and Little Big Inch pipelines;
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Message 11
Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Friday, 25th November 2011
Tim, Triceratops, Ur
I believe that the oil we would have sourced in peacetime went to the USA; I am trying to find a reference.
A point often overlooked is that much of the oil from the USA came as refined product (I think it is known as "distillate" in the trade) in the form of diesel, aviation fuel etc, rather than crude oil for refining in UK.
This was the reason for the horrifying infernos when tankers were torpedoed. Crude oil burns only with difficulty (as those who can recall ±«Óãtv film of Hunters and Buccanneers trying to set fire to the Torrey Canyon may remember).
LWLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 12
Posted by Triceratops (U3420301) on Friday, 25th November 2011
This was the reason for the horrifying infernos when tankers were torpedoed.
Indeed LW. One ship that did get lucky was the San Demetrio
About one-third of the oil was carried on Norwegian tankers, which were at sea when the Germans invaded Norway and joined the Allied cause.Link to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 13
Posted by Triceratops (U3420301) on Friday, 25th November 2011
Indeed LW. One ship that did get lucky was the San Demetrio
Unfortunately sunk later on. Operation Drumbeat?Link to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 14
Posted by Piltdown (U6504098) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011
One problem that affected the RAF was that prior to 1936 it's aircraft used 80 octane petrol but the new Merlin engined Hurricanes and Spitfires which started coming into service that year required 100 (later on 150) octane fuel. The decision was taken early on to standardise on 100 octane to avoid the possibility of the new fighters being filled with the wrong petrol. It of course meant that the RAF had to build up stocks from scratch. In 1936 the Oil Board stipulated that the RAF should hold six months stock of fuel and lubricants, increased to one year in the spring of 1939. None of the services reached their fuel reserve targets by the beginning of the war, not because there was any delay in supply or purchase but because it took so long to build the necessary storage at a time when re-armament was already stretching the available supplies of manpower and materials.
During the first year of war fuel consumption by army and air-force was actually much lower than pre-war estimates, even during the Battle of Britain the RAF used 10,700 tons of petrol per week against an Oil Board estimate of 11,100 tons. Consumption may have increased later in the war but by then the RAF was very much larger than it was in 1939.Link to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 15
Posted by Tim of Acleah (U1736633) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011
Cass
sorry to take a while to get back. In fact there was an important change in the construction of these new protected storage tanks compared to the earlier tanks built before, during and shortly after WW1 in that these tanks were of a welded rather than a rivitted construction.
Also many of the tanks are still operational, I doubt if there are any Ww2 warships from the RN that are still operational.
regards
TimLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 16
Posted by Tim of Acleah (U1736633) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011
Tricep
I would imagine that the USa would have consumed entirely or virtually entirely US oil which I think would be the reason for the very high US figure overall. The UK would have been less, but as per my previous post considerable. I presume that the USSR is not included in the allied figure.
regards
TimLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 17
Posted by Tim of Acleah (U1736633) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011
LW
this is from the book I am writing
'In preparing for a possible war, it was decided not to increase the capacity for home refining. It is sometimes thought that there were no refineries in Britain before the war but in fact this is not correct. In 1938 slightly more than one fifth of the UK’s total requirement for refined oil products came from home refineries. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP) had opened two refineries in the 1920s, one at Grangemouth on the Forth in Scotland and one at Llandarcy near Swansea in Wales. In 1927 Standard Oil (now Esso) had opened a refinery at Fawley near Southampton and Shell had also built three refineries during the 1920s. These were located at Shell Haven on the Thames estuary, Stanlow on Merseyside and Ardrossanon on the west coast of Scotland. There was in addition a small independent refinery at Ellesmere Port on Merseyside.
There were two reasons why it was decided that it was not in the UK’s interest to increase its refinery capacity. Firstly refineries were considered to be vulnerable to air attack and secondly about fifteen per cent of the crude oil was ‘lost’ in the course of the refining process. This meant that it took more tanker space to transport crude than refined oil. It was expected that in a war Britain would be short of tanker space. An advantage to the oil companies in siting a refinery in an oil producing country was generally lower labour costs.'
I had added, as a footnote
'When the super-tanker the Torrey Canyon ran aground in 1967, the RAF and RN had great difficulty in setting the leaking fuel alight when they bombed it. The reason given on TV was because of it carrying crude oil compared to tankers during the war that had always carried refined oil and so had burned easily when hit by bombs.'
rgds
TimLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 18
Posted by Tim of Acleah (U1736633) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011
A bit from my book on the setting up of the Petroleum Board to run the petroleum industry during the war (the storage sites were manned by civilians from the Petroleum board not by the military).
'On 1st September 1939, even before war had been declared, the government took control of the four railway companies forming them into one organisation. At midnight on the 3rd/4th September, following the declaration of war and as already planned, the Petroleum Board came into existence. Around 18,500 staff previously working for the oil companies all became employees of the board. Each petrol station, depot or office, became a Petroleum Board establishment. Every road tanker, barge or rail tanker wagon; whether formerly Shell Mex and BP, National Benzole, Anglo-American Oil, Trinidad Leaseholds or any other of the many companies, came under the Petroleum Board. All the different grades of gasoline were done away with and there was henceforth to be only one ‘pool’ grade of petrol. It was decided, however, that it would be impossible to standardise all the different variants of lubricating oils. The management of the Petroleum Board was set up at Shell-Mex House in London and the Board was given a monopoly of supply in the United Kingdom. An eleven member board was set up with three members each from Shell Mex & BP Ltd. and the Anglo-American Oil Company; one member from the National Benzole Company, Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd. and the Texas Oil Company; one member represented the smaller ‘independent’ oil companies and lastly the Chairman of the separate Lubricating Oil Pool.
The teleprinter network with its control centre at Shell-Mex House allowed communication to regional offices, depots and refineries. The system could handle up to 5,000 messages a day, which although minuscule by today’s standards was very impressive in 1939. Three months before the start of the war, a duplicate set of terminations for teleprinters had been set up in a bomb-proof room. On 2nd September all the teleprinters were unplugged and moved to the new secure location. In addition, alternative routing was put in for telephone lines with some going via the Embankment and some via the Strand. Duplicate teleprinters and telephones were also placed in the Shell-Mex House air raid shelters so that an emergency service could be run from there. Similar arrangements were made in sites around the country. '
[A teleprinter is an electromechanical device by which a typed message can be sent by a variety of communications networks from one location to one or a multiple of remote locations. The message automatically appears on a teleprinter at the designated remote location(s).]
Sorry i cannot post a photo of all the teleprinter operators in Shell Mex house in their very 1940s hairstyles.
TimLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 19
Posted by Triceratops (U3420301) on Sunday, 4th December 2011
Tim,
I presume that the USSR is not included in the allied figure.
This is just from wiki and is production rather than consumption;
in millions of metric tons. As a rough conversion 7.2 barrels = 1 metric ton, going by this the 7 billion barrels used by the Allies in the earlier post, refers only to the Western Allies.Link to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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Message 20
Posted by Triceratops (U3420301) on Sunday, 4th December 2011
Mmmm, did not think that one fully through as it would not include Soviet imports from the US and Iran.
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Message 21
Posted by Tim of Acleah (U1736633) on Sunday, 11th December 2011
Before this closes i thought I would post some more info on the building of the storage system from the book I am currently writing
The programme for building protected storage depots proceeded at an increasing rate, the peak was between 1940 and 1942. There were a few differences in detail between the tanks started in 1938 and those built later in the war, but in general the tanks remained the same in design. Labour shortages became a progressively greater problem as the demands of the Armed Forces increased, although this was offset to a certain extent by increased mechanisation. A labour force of approximately thirty men per tank at the beginning of the war was reduced to approximately twenty men by the end of the war. The rate of construction also increased such that by the end of the war the time required to build and weld a large C2 tank, ready for testing, had been reduced from 6½ weeks to 4½ weeks.
The storage depots were not normally operated by the military but by the oil company that had designed them and supervised their construction on behalf of the relevant ministry. The percentage share of the site construction was intended to be in accordance with their share of service contracts, not of the domestic market, before the start of the war. This was broadly, but not precisely, achieved except Trinidad Leaseholds were given a significantly larger share of the construction work than justified on the basis of their fuel contracts.
As well as building protected buried or semi-buried tanks steps were taken to protect, as far as possible, the existing above-ground storage tanks. Most large commercial installations, except for in the Thames estuary where it was considered pointless, were camouflaged. Also bund walls were built around the tanks when there was the space between tanks for them. This was more to protect adjacent tanks from the effects of an explosion close to that tank than to provide direct protection to the tank itself. The programme for building protected storage tanks, however, had already fallen behind schedule and was becoming increasingly delayed. The blackout made work at night impossible and there were shortages of labour and materials. The Air Ministry were the most advanced with their programme, with 696,000 tons of storage completed by September 1940 of which 400,000 tons had been completed during the first year of war.
None of the schemes designed to reduce the effects of air attack on the means of storing and transporting petroleum had been completed by the time the Luftwaffe commenced their air attacks on Britain. By December 1940 200,000 tons of commercial above-ground and 118,000 tons of Admiralty tankage had been destroyed as a result of bombing. By July 1941 the total Admiralty and commercial storage lost was 500,000 tons out of a total of 10 million tons of all types of storage. According to the official history the air force and army suffered no loss of storage tanks at all. In total only two semi-buried tanks were destroyed as a result of being hit by bombs, one at Poole in Dorset and one at Falmouth, Swanvale in Cornwall, illustrating the value of protected storage tanks. Despite this bombing attacks had less impact on the industry than had been expected, for example none of the refineries suffered serious damage.
The tank at Poole was hit by a 500 kilogram bomb at the entrance chamber where the pipelines entered and exited the tank. The explosion blew off half of the concrete roof, demolished the side of the tank and the tank tunnel. Several columns supporting the roof collapsed and the tank floor was severely damaged. Despite the explosion there was no fire and some of the fuel, which spread out over a wide area within the bund, was recovered. None of the adjacent tanks were damaged and they continued in operation. The Poole depot was later transferred to the Ministry of Power, but at the time of the raid was an Air Ministry site and so the official history was not entirely correct in stating that the air force suffered no loss of tankage during the War.
The tank at Falmouth, however, was on a civil storage depot. It was hit during the very last major air attack on Britain which occurred on the night of 30th/31st May 1944. A direct hit on the tank containing around 4,000 tons (5,000,000 litres) of gasoline led to a fire that continued to burn for twenty-two hours. The tank was hit around midnight and fractured, leading to a stream of burning gasoline six feet wide flowing towards the village of Swanvale. Flames coming out of the tank reached seventy feet in the air and attempts by fire fighters failed to put them out. Two American servicemen volunteered to drive bulldozers to dam the stream of flaming product. They were later to be awarded the British Empire medal. Altogether 28 pumps, 200 fire firemen and 500 American servicemen, waiting to take part in the Normandy invasion, took part in fighting the fire.
The same raid saw a 1,000 kilogram bomb hit one of the air ministry depots landing close to a C2 tank and blowing some of the earth covering off the tank. The tank itself appeared undamaged, but detailed examination, after the tank was emptied, showed that the top shell plates, closest to the explosion, had buckled in. They had, however, continued to prevent the loss of most of the fuel and less than one cubic metre was lost.
TimLink to this forum: The RAF 1936 not just a shortage of modern aircraft
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