Originally posted by Krusty
19,200 tons.... that's it.... ???
Hell a single B-52 holds more than that, I bet!!!!
Considering the 10s of thousands of fighters flown nonstop, every day, multiple sorties per day, that's a drop in the bucket. I don't have any numbers to manipulate myself, but the evidence simply isn't there.
Why do you post if you have no numbers or evidence? A single P-51, with 2 110 gallon drop tanks carries 489 gallons. At 378 gallons to a ton, 19,200 tons is 7,257,600 gallons. That would be enough for 14,841 P-51 sorties where they burned every ounce of fuel.
From
this link we can add up the 8th AF fighter sorties for Nov of 1944, and see that they flew 12,836 operational sorties for the month. Thus, the 19,200 tons consumed was plenty to cover their operational sorties as well as other flying.
Hell, if the collective lot of you crucify Kurfurst for claiming C3 was used in 109K-4s when all he had was an actual order, telling units to use it and you don't even have that, I think you're coming off rather 2-faced and biased.
[/b]
I wasn't involved in that discusion, and have never expressed an opinion on the matter. Seeing as how it's completely unrelated to the topic of this thread, 8th AF useage of 150 octane fuel, I'll move on.
You are, as Hitech has put it, cherry picking the data.
I'm no expert, but reading this and previous posts on the matter (many many many repetitive posts), the persona non grata Crump had the better argument. You tell ME that the most red-taped, indoctrined, no-individual-thinking-allowed US military is not going to put in print via order or manual that this gas is used, and that pilots are going to be using it anyway? I'm not going to believe you.
[/b]
Care to point out which data I'm "cherry picking"? Your assumption that the USAAF in world war 2 was "the most red-taped, indoctrined, no-individual-thinking-allowed" force is the problem here. What is that based upon? Your assumption. Just to step outside the fuel debate here, there are a lot of examples of 8th AF units doing things differently. Take painting aircraft - the 8th was known for gaudy paint jobs, and after factories started delivering aircraft without paint some units would continue to paint their aircraft in various custom camo schemes. Or look at the guns of the P-51B - they had a tendency of jamming, so instead of just dealing with it and waiting for a fix to arrive from the US, some clever mechanics rigged feed motors from B26 gunner positions to solve the problem.
Or better yet, how about the writing of General Kepner, the Commander of 8th Fighter Command himself:
A fighter pilot may well read these pages with a red pencil in his hand marking a passage here and there with the thought, "That's for me", then practice, try out and develop the technique until it becomes part of his own, or if it doesn't work out, discard it. It is by such basic learning, plus imagination, expirement and test in combat that all techniques have been developed, and all great fighter pilots have won their many battles.Kepner wrote that as the forward to a tactics manual that he had put together assembling the thoughts of some of his more successful pilots at the time (May 1944). That idea of "if it works use it, if not, change it" is an example of the common-sense attitudes of the 8th, which as you can see came from the top down.
It was tested, that's been proven. It was never adopted. The arguments about this make perfect sense, and that seems to be the case.
So, basically, the burden of proof is up to you. Find a document that says the 8th AF was ordered to use 150 octane gas, some sort of TO like Crump suggested, or some official document that says as much.
[/b]
A
memo from Eisenhower himself requesting materials for the fuel at the highest urgency. Or how about it being specifically mentioned
here that the 8th AF adopted the fuel. Or specific mention
here saying that ALL replacement fighter aircraft being recieved by the 8th AF were being converted for use with the fuel. Or how about approval from the engineering division to use higher power settings with the 150 octane fuel, seen
here. Similar documents exist for the P-47 and P-38. Or how about the statements of a published historian on the subject, seen
here.All of this was posted in the previous threads along with statements from actual 8th AF personel describing fueling with 150 octane, modifying aircraft for 150 octane, and using the increased power settings operationally. All of those references are for Mustangs, which is critical because as it states
here, operational testing was carried out with P-47s and P-38s, not P-51s. And we have pictures of 8th AF P-51s remarked for 150 octane fuel.
So we have document evidence that high command wanted the fuel to be used, that it was tested, that the aircraft were approved to use it, that it was delivered to all of the airbases(replacing the 100 octane that they had), that it was supplied
and consumed in quantities more then sufficient to support ALL of the 8th AF's fighter ops by ALL of their units, and on top of that we have statements from the pilots and mechanics corroborating this, as well as photo evidence corroborating this.
The only evidence that was presented here and in the other threads to counter this was:
- a Techinical Order giving instructions for using low octane substitute fuels, which the last revision on was dated after the war
- a document showing worldwide consumption of 100 octane fuel, from which no 8th AF specific information could be drawn
- an unreadable chart showing fuel consumption and reserves, followed by a statement that the 8th couldn't have used 150 octane because they wouldn't have enough for reserves - this was answered by
this document which clearly showed that a reserve had already been created and that supply was sufficient
- a chart showing USAAF fuel consumption in the ETO (with no specific mention of units, air forces, or fuel grades), which was claimed showed that there wasn't enough fuel for the number of sorties flown- this was shown to be false as I compared the 8th AF fighter command sorties totals to the supply of 150 octane fuel and showed that it was more then sufficient
- a chart showing the 9th AF in the MTO, with no date on it, which was claimed to show that the previous doc only listed 8th AF fuel consumption. Since the 9th AF was originally created in the MTO, and only later moved to the ETO, it's clear that the document was from earlier date. Not to mention that the fuel consumption totals on the previous chart must have included both 8th and 9th AF fighters, as the 8th AF couldn't possibly have come close to burning the totals listed knowing how many operational sorties they flew.
In short, there IS NO "counter-evidence" that we have seen yet that is applicable to what we are talking about.
Tons of fuel means nothing to this argument. It takes a lot of fuel to thoroughly test something out, as well. They were still having problems with 150 octane well past the war, into 1947, so I doubt very much that they'd be using it in 1944 on a widespread scale.
[/b]
Tons of fuel do matter when enough is being both delivered and consumed to support EVERY operational flight by 8th AF fighters. It does matter when it replaced the 100 octane fuel they had been using. It does matter when we have loads of documents, as well as statements from veterans who were there, and photos that support this.
Okay, this is to cover my bellybutton about this post here, I just typed. I'm not necessarily against modeling 150 octane in AH. I'm against claiming it's needed because a few rare planes in one small group, based in England, tested the gas and found it unfeasible for long term use. It's like saying that the Do335 was tested in a combat zone, so it must have seen combat during the military and weapons testing part of its lifespan development. There's no proof because all the records that late in the war were destroyed or simply lost in the first place. It's like that. You can't have a double standard, and the standard has already been set. This 150 octane argument just doesn't live up to it.
As I pointed out above, there is a ton of proof in the shape of period documents, statements from veterans and photos. Also the comparison with the DO335 is silly. We're talking about the entire 8th AF FC's operations from June/July of 44 through the end of the war. We're talking a force of around 1000 fighters, flying 10-20k sorties a month for 9 months straight. Thats tens of thousands of sorties, and accounts for thousands of kills and probably around 1000 losses. That's a HUGE part of what Tour of Duty is going to simulate. Hardly "a few rare planes in one small group".
Compare that to the N1K2 - all of 393 production aircraft built. Or how about the F4U-1C - all of 200 built. Not to mention aircraft like the Me163 or Ta152. Now obviously if these were modeled they should be perk planes in the MA, but don't we want Combat Tour to model the aircraft as they were actually used by the 8th AF?
