I'm amazed at the resistance to 100 octane usage from some members on here.
The circumstancial evidence is overwhelming.
I have loads of pilots memoirs from the BoB era and at lots of them mention putting 100 octane fuel in their cars, before, during and after the BoB.
It doesn't sound like they were very carefull about saving 100 octane because it was in short supply.
All RAF pilots who mention 100 octane say it was introduced just before the main battle, without exception. They have no reason to lie about this. They don't need to rewrite history, everyone knows what happened. There would be plenty of references to 'if we had 100 octane fuel we could have...' (much like all the references to cannons.. ie 'If we had cannons we would have..'). I have never seen a single reference made by an RAF pilot about the lack of 100 octane during the BoB. (I have at least 250 seperate accounts from the period.).
Or how about a dated photograph? Whilst the conversion was taking place, as someone here has already mentioned, the ground crew painted '100' onto the cowling of the converted aircraft. Find me a photograph from June 1940 onwards where this marking is visable. I can't find one. The reason? Because the conversion process had finished and there was no need to differentiate between the 2 types of fuel.
So like the others on here, I'd like to see a single account from somebody who was there that mentions a shortage/restriction re 100 oct during the battle.
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