[Norm]

A friend sent me this, interesting.


It’s always been a puzzle why the German Luftwaffe kept on using 87 Octane Aviation Gasoline while the Americans and British used 100 Octane Gasoline in their Spitfire Fighters and Americans used 130 Octane in our P-51 and other fighters. This morning I discovered the reason!

This is a declassified article by the British Society of Chemists
(Declassified in 2014)

It seems that the German and British aircraft both used 87 Octane Gasoline in the first two years of the war. While that was fairly satisfactory in the German Daimler-Benz V-12 engine, It was marginal in the British Rolls-Royce Merlin XX engine in British aircraft. It fouled the spark-plugs, caused valves to stick, and made frequent engine repair problems.

Then came lend-lease and American aircraft began to enter British service in great numbers. If British engines hated 87 Octane gasoline, American, General Motors built Allison 1710 engines loathed and despised it. Something had to be done!

Along came an American named Tim Palucka, a chemist for Sun Oil in their South East Texas Refinery. Never heard of him? Small wonder. Very few people have. He took a French formula for enhancing the octane of Gasoline, and invented the "Cracking Tower". The oil companies began producing 100 octane aviation gasoline. This discovery led to great joy among our English Cousins and great distress among the Germans.

A Spitfire fueled with 100 Octane gasoline was 34 miles per hour faster at 10,000 feet. The need to replace engines went from every 500 hours of operation to every 1,000 hours. Which reduced the cost of British aircraft by 300 Pounds Sterling. Even more, when used in 4 engine bombers.

Meanwhile, the Germans couldn't believe it when Spitfires that couldn't catch them a year ago started shooting their ME-109 E and G models right out of the sky.

Of course, the matter had to be kept secret. If the Germans found out that it was a French Invention, they would simply copy the original French patents.

If any of you have ever wondered what they were doing in that 3 story white brick building in front of the Sun Oil Refinery on Old Highway 90 that was it. They were re-inventing gasoline.

The American Allison engines improved remarkably with 100 Octane gasoline, but did much better when 130 octane gasoline came along in 1944. The 130 Octane also improved the Radial Engine Bombers we produced.

The Germans and Japanese never snapped to the fact that we had re-invented gasoline. Neither did our "Friends" the Russians.

100,000 Americans died in the skies over Europe. Lord only knows what that number would have been without "Super-Gasoline". And it all was invented just a few miles west of Beaumont. We never knew a thing about it.