OIL FOR WAR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24432, 18 October 1940, Page 8

OIL FOR WAR

THE WORLD SUPPLY AXIS NATIONS’ PLIGHT , WHAT AIRCRAFT U§E , •••’ • ■ ) An article in the English aviation journal Flight answers, with the reservations that must be made, where so much is hidden Under war . censorship, questions that everyone is asking: How much oil' have Germany and Italy? How long can they last? How much : oil do aircraft burn? It is in answering the last question that the writer makes his most striking point; it is that even when heavy raids are made the quantity of oil used in 'the air is after all only a small fraction of the oil . used every day in .land haulage, for. though 400 planes may make the attack, hundreds of thousands of motor-vehicles ’travel the roads. Nevertheless, Germany. Italy, and Japan are hard put to find oil for war and essential civil, are fighting their war: On Other nations Off. ■‘ OU ” is used in the.:;, sense of petroleum products, i.e., aviation fuels, motor spirits, fuel oils, lubricating oils and crude oil, whether from wells or from hydrogenation plants. Pre-war Production ■ Where is the oil of the world produced? Before the waf production figures were of the order, of• magnitude of the following table:— ;

All the figures have some doubt about them, but they still give a background for the wartime oil picture. United States production and consumption tower above all others, Russia and South America are also important, as is the Iran and Iraq total. .Rumania produced , much anct,;;consUmed about a.-auarter of it. leaving 4,600,000 tons available for export. Germany for her peacetime needs had to import about 6,000,000 tons, so Rumania would be unable to supply such needs alone. The German figure ol 2,000,000 tons is made up of 0.5 natural oil and 1.5 petrol from coal, but the figures on this latter quantity are admittedly, vagiie. The Capitulation of France has improved. the German oil situation by giving her coal for the hydrogenation Diants. Such coal has to be transported there. and the R.A.P. may be able seriously to hamper that. Consumption in Raids Germany’s, peace-time consumption of 7.9 million tons her year is equivalent to 21.600 tons per day. What is .war-time consumption? the article continues. That difficult question cannot be answered with one figure, for this war is noi steady. Ldll periods are interspersed; with periods of intense activity. Consider only the petrol used by aircraft on a day of raiding when a total of something like 400 enemy aeroplanes appear round our coasts. Broad generalisations must be made to arrive at a rough figure of total consumption. About half Would be single-engined and half twin-engined, and each engine would be between 1000 and 1200 horsepower. On the trip across petrol would be conserved by (lying slowly, probably not more than half-power During Hhe inevitable battle, full power would be used frequently, so that one might generalise at 75 per cent, power. This gives 55 and 110 gallons per hour for the two types. Allowing three hours in the air during the day. this gives 100.000 gallons used for 400 aircraft on the raid. This weighs 360 tons a very small fraction of the 21,600 tons of petroleum products used per day in peace-time Of course, much more flying must go on in addition to that required for the raiding. There must be training, reconnaissance, com,munication. and transport flying all going constantly. And the civil consumption of petroleum must also continue. although no doubt on a reduced scale ‘

U.S.A. .. Mexico ' South America .. Iran and Iraq .. . (Millions ol tons per year ol petroleum products) . , Conduction, sumption. .. 162.0 . : 138.0 ;:■! 6.5 1.9 0.5 .. 28.0? 27,0? Dutch East Indies British Isles France 1 .. . .. Germany Italy .. Japan 7.5 0.2 .. f 0.07 .. 2.0? 0.01 0.2 9.8 0.9 7.9 3.5 3.9