Quote:
Originally Posted by Kurfürst
Well let's see now the reality.
Tanker losses to all causes, I have gathered a total of 78(!!) tankers were sunk by mine, U-boot (typically), aircraft and raiders, between September 1939 and November 1940. About 90% of them were British, though there are a couple of Swedish, Dutch, French etc. tankers
I have them by name, date, cause of loss, route, cargo, tonnage and so on. For example indeed one tanker that went through Halifax, Inverdagle (9456 tons) was sunk by mines laid by the submarine U 34, with 12 500 tons of avgas - about a month worth consumption of 100 octane, though I am not sure what grade it actually carried - on the 16 January 1940.
The first one was Regent Tiger, with about 15 000 tons of oil products, five days after Britain declared war on Germany. The worst blow was possibly the sinking of 13 000 ton San Fernando by the fabled U-47 on the 21 June 1940 (U-43 got another one on the same day). This one alone carried 18 000 tons of oil product that never reached Liverpool.
Alltogether 558,260 GRT of tankers went to Davy Jones locker, by the end of November 1940, along with 385,957 tons of oil product. Half of that, ca. 243 000 GRT worth of tankers were sunk by the end May 1940.
Fuel oil was the greatest loss, 116 000 tons of it went down with tankers (luckily, no green peace back then). Avgas seems quite untypical as a load, but in the end it didn't really matter, because if a tanker sunk with diesel oil, or even empty, the next one had to haul about its cargo again.
Tanker losses were serious, unfortunately.
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Still waiting for
a) Your explanation of how the reserves went up during the BOB if the tankers didn't bring it in.
b) An explanation as to how you came to believe that I hadn't looked for the document
c) An explanation as to why NZ was lying about the Australian records not having it
d) As you agree that the War Cabinet clearly didn't approve any stopping of the roll out of 100 Octane to FC in May a position supported by the Oil Committee who didn't discuss it from May 1940 to May 1944. Can I ask who you believe would have the authority to overule the Prime Minister, who was the leader of the War Cabinet, The Chief of the Air Staff who asked for the fighter squadrons to be equipped with 100 Octane, and the Oil Committee who had responsibility for the purchase, storage and distribution of the fuel.
e) Where is this Beaverbrook Paper
I could go on with the list of questions you have yet to respond to but I think the point has been made.