Frankly, it is very difficult to follow this discussion ...
For me it is easier to understand articles that have reviewed the literature and where I can draw conclusions:
Palucka, Tim. The Wizard of Octane.
American Heritage of Invention & Technology, 20. 3 (Winter 2005): 36-45.
Resume: IF, AS THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE SAID, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then one can assert with equal justice that the Battle of Britain was won at the Stevens Hotel, in Chicago, on November 18, 1938. It was there, at the annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, that Arthur E. Pew, vice president and head of research of the Sun Oil Company, described his company's extraordinary new catalytic refining process. Using it, he said, Sun was turning what was normally considered a waste product into gasoline-and not just ordinary gasoline, but a highoctane product that could fuel the era's most advanced airplanes. That process would make a crucial difference in mid-1940, when the Royal Air Force started filling its Spitfires and Hurricanes with 100-octane gasoline imported from the United States instead of the 87 octane it had formerly used. Luftwaffe pilots couldn't believe they were facing the same planes they had fought successfully over France a few months before. The planes were the same, but the fuel wasn't. In his 1943 book The Amazing Petroleum Industry, V. A. Kalichevsky of the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company explained what high-octane gasoline meant to Britain: "It is an established fact that a difference of only 13 points in octane number made possible the defeat of the Luftwaffe by the R.A.F. in the fall of 1940. This difference, slight as it seems, is sufficient to give a plane the vital `edge' in altitude, rate of climb and maneuverability that spells the difference between defeat and victory."
Bailey, Gavin. The Narrow Margin of Criticality: The Question of the Supply of 100-Octane Fuel in the Battle of Britain.
English Historical Review; Apr2008, Vol. 123 Issue 501, p395-411, 17p, 3 Charts
Resume: The article focuses on the supply of 100-octane fuel during the battle of Great Britain. Aviation historians have advanced the supply of 100-octane aviation fuel as critical American contribution to the battle. A study of the contemporary Air Ministry records in the Public Record Office shows that this assertion can be challenged. The challenge can be made on the grounds of the aircraft performance benefit involved, as showed by contemporary Royal Air Force (RAF) testing, and on the national origin attributed to 100-octane fuel supplies. The records reveal that contrary to the assertion of aviation history, the supply of 100-octane fuel to RAF in time for use in the battle must be attributed to pre-war British planning and investment on the rearmament period of the late nineteen-thirties.
My only conclusion is that only in this forum I read the statement that 100-octane did not have a role in the Battle of Britain (statement supported by the devs?
) ... and not supported in a peer-reviewed article...