Fw: World War II Trivia - Gasoline

Very ineresting, and I have some more details, especially on the MCPC Refinery
in West Tulsa, that may not be known outside it. More on that later. This came
in as "Rich Text" and my machine auto-changed to "Plain Text" which reduced
the byte size.

----- Original Message -----
From: "J McGuire" <jim_tec5@yahoo.com>
To: "Jimmy McGuire" <jim_tec5@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2020 3:27 PM
Subject: World War II Trivia - Gasoline


Thanks to Mitch Reed, All Veterans Association member for the below article. I never knew....
Stay safe and healthy-------------------------------------------------

Subject: World War II Trivia - Gasoline
It has always puzzled me as to 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 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 " and produced 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. 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'd 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 , and we never knew a thing about it.