Ed,

First off I can not answer your question about Aviation fuel delivery but just a tidbit about it…And I am NOT a petro engineer but am an aviation historian and my aviation roots go back about to the same stage as my railroad family roots do so I grew up with this J

Jimmy Doolittle in the mid 1930’s was a Captain and Major while in the Army and was a world famous air show pilot and racer. He retired from the Army Air Corps to take a position with Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum as their VP of Aviation products for the US. He was based out of St. Louis (My father and I rehabbed a house just a couple of doors down from his to pay my way through college in the late 70’s) because this was still the cutting edge of aviation as much as NY, southern CA, and Seattle were. I attended Parks College which was part of St Louis University and where a lot of his aviation fuel research was done and saw many of the original notes and reports he either wrote or had written about the aviation fuel needs of the US in peacetime much less for military use.

I am going from memory here so some small details may be off a bit but the basis is correct.

The basic fuel up till then was around a 60-80 octane and even with adding Tetraethyl lead (a.k.a Ethyl) it was not that efficient for the engines of the day. The Boeing B-17 was in development and due to his close friendship with Ira Eaker and Hap Arnold he was able to convince Shell to pioneer the higher octanes that were necessary to fly high performance engines at high altitudes without causing excessive detonation without having to add as much TEL as before. It gave a higher horsepower and efficiency to engines especially the higher end ones such as the Rolls Royce/Packard Merlin which was used in the Spitfire, P-51 Mustang, and Lancaster heavy bomber.

Being able to not use as much Ethyl in the fuels helped the resource management just a bit because otherwise there would have had to be a much larger amount shipped worldwide to use as a high altitude fuel additive.

Another question to consider on the aviation fuels is if it was pre-blended with TEL or if it was added on site at the various POL depots and airfields around the world and how was it shipped as well.

So that gives one more potential load/empty for those fuel terminals.

Regards,

Tim Mulina

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