The Cost Of Manufacture Sank

Because the Allies were manufacturing many planes, they needed tremendous quantities of 100-octane gasoline to power them. Ralph K. Davies, Deputy Administrator of the Petroleum Administration and a top-flight oil executive, found one of his first tasks was to boost the production of 100-octane from 42,000 barrels a day (the United Nations' production as of 1941) to at least 100,000 barrels a day immediately. Overcoming a multitude of obstacles he did so—until production of that precious fuel reached more than 500,000 barrels a day in 1944. The cost per gallon incidentally, fell from $30 to 14 cents. Meanwhile, the original "perfect" 100-octane fuel was improved so often from 1941 to 1945 that it is almost necessary to describe the aviation gasoline with which the United Nations ended the war as being the perfect aviation fuel.

Progress was also made in the uses of other fuels. The safety gasoline became the jellied petroleum that burned Japanese out of their Iwo Jima island caves. The lubricant that defied temperature was most useful for the airplanes that took off from the torrid sands of the Sahara and soared into the sub-zero weather of the near-stratosphere. Whenever the armed forces needed a new type of petroleum product, they brought their specifications to PAW. Sometimes it was necessary only for the chemists to reach up on the shelf and bring down another te6t-tube formula, and, by V-J Day, the United States was furnishing more than 75 percent of all the oil products needed throughout the United Nations to conquer the enemy. And the petroleum industry was set to meet demands that ran into even more astronomical figures. Now, from the standpoint of people like you and me, what good, in peace, are we going to get out of the petroleum miracles of war? Believe it or not, no genuinely new petroleum product has come out of this war.

The real, constructive, exhilarating development coming out of warfare was that it enabled the chemists to take their triumphs off the shelves and put them into actual use. After the mass production required in war, the costs of manufacture sank from the prohibitive to the range of the man-of-the-street's pocketbook. From now on you will buy better gasoline for your automobile, and buy better home fuel. It might even be cheaper. The tiresome warning of the radio announcer to change your oil to winter grade, or spring grade, or what-have-you, may become obsolete. There will be on the market a multitude of war-tested, more economical and better-performing products.

By: davidbunch

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