Crumpp
You might be interested to know that in December 1938 the Air Ministry were planning to ensure that there were adaquate supplies of 100 Octane should war break out. There were two main factors, The Hartley Committee which recommended the size of the RAF in war and once you know the proposed size of the RAF, you can start estmating the demand for fuel.
The PLans were put forward
Plan F 124 squadrons with 1,736 front Line Aircraft
Plan L (intermediate) 161 squadrons with 2,541 front line aircraft
Plan L (Unltimate) 163 squadrons with 2,549 front line aircraft
It was estimated that it would take two years to get to Plan L which was the reccomendation put forward. so you are talking about the end of 1940.
It was estimated that this would need between 670,000 - 735,000 tons of 100 Octane a year and plans were put in place to deliver this capacity by the end of 1940.
What is interesting is that in Dec 1938 plans were in place for the support of 2,500 front line aircraft with 100 octane by the end of 1940. When you remember that in Aug 1940 all RAF front line commands were authorised to use 100 Octane, you can see that these plans although modified as circumstances unfolded, were basically kept to. The modification was of course, mainly that the war started before anyone expected it to
Its also worth remembering that we have a summary paper from Nov 1940 saying that the UK were well ahead of their plans iro fuel stocks
I should acknowledge that I believe Kurfurst was the first person to post the paper outlining the RAF 1938 plans on a different forum.
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