Fuel Rationed on the Home Front

WALK, DON'T DRIVE -- Almost every drop of fuel was saved for military vehicles in WW2. As a result, people did a lot more walking. Perhaps we can learn a lesson from the past. Read more by clicking the Wartime Wednesdays link below.

 

Looks to me like that significant dip is for the Great Depression, starting it's decline in 1929 and bottoming out in the early 30's. Also worth mentioning is there was a huge drop in US coal production(a little over 200 million tons) at the beginning of the Great Depression, and coal, at that time was the major energy source.


Gas rationing would be the proverbial "drop in the bucket." comparatively speaking.

 

This is a vast oversimplification from a historical point of view. The major reason for most people not driving a personal car in WW2 was that they had no car, had never had a car, and did not seriously expect ever to have one. That did not mean that most people most of the time walked everywhere, as most people going more than a short journey used public transport, and in many cases this would be a motor bus (as distinct from a trolley bus), so petrol would be used.

 

My claim to fame is that I was born on the day that petrol rationing ceased in the UK on 26th May 1950. I suspect that my birth was such a momentous occasion that the authorities decided to celebrate in a significant way. I never did agree with my mother's view that I had ideas above my station.

 

Fuel rationing was a serious matter in the UK during WWII......crewing a tanker on the Atlantic convoys was no laughing matter.

Zec's now-legendary cartoon caused an enormous outcry at the time..

 

Would the effects of fuel rationing vary with exactly who you were?

I don't recall a wartime British pilots memoir that fails to mention of a group of them at some stage 'piling in' to another pilots car for a drvie into town. No rationing there, obviously, and leave off station can hardly be considered essential war business.

Further, I also seem to recall Sir Arthur Harris maintaining his rather expensive and fuel inefficient motor vehicle for his own personal use way before he ever became Chief of Bomber Comand, (In fact, his driving was so erratic, even on wartime roads with no cars, that policemen who stopped him warned him regularly that he might kill someone. "I'm paid to kill people" was the laconic reply). Nope, no rationing there either.

I think the fuel situation was resented by most Brits, particularly when rumours abounded of the American citizen driving unaffected. They were only rumours, but morale suffered anyway.

 

Rubber was also needed for the war effort and tires were impossible to get. When the car no longer had tired it was back to riding the horses locally, or take the train if going any distance. Our family lived in the mid-west then.

 

With regard to the British pilots use of fuel, many memoirs ( eg Brian Kingcombe, Paddy Barthropp, Jack Currie etc ) refer to the use of high-octane aviation fuel being 'borrowed' to keep their private cars running. Illegal, and strictly 'against regulations', but most authority turned a blind eye in view of the risks being taken by aircrew.

One doesn't, for instance, hear much about groundcrew or admin staff roaring about the countryside in private cars......

 

The main reason for gas rationing in the US was because of the extreme shortage of rubber for tires. When the Japanese overran SE Asia and Indonesia, our main source of rubber was gone. If one drove less, there would be less wear and tear on tires was the reasoning. Of course the side-effect of gas rationing (burning less gas) contributed greatly to the war effort too. Of course as mentioned earlier, not every American owned a car or truck back then, so the hardship of gas rationing would not be felt as much as it would be today.

In my dad's family, there was one car and they lived very near town. My dad and his brother rode bicycles mostly, and the car was driven by grandpa since he was employed in a munitions factory which meant they drew an extra gas ration for that. My mom's side of the family was a little different. They lived on the farm and did not own a vehicle or a bicycle at all. Mostly they walked everywhere (school, stores, etc). They owned a horse and wagon that was used a great deal. It wasn't until the early 50s when several of the extended families pooled their money together to buy a used tractor. The fields were plowed by mule driven power until then. They were off the grid before being off the grid was cool!

And when the Great Depression hit, it didn't affect them one bit. They was already po Mom said.

 

Quite true - but I suspect it was more the accessibility to MT Pool on-station leavened with aviation fuel that kept them on the road All those nippy little sportscars would have been very sick runners on Pool...but a percentage of aviation spirit would have kept the octane rating of the contents of the tank up.

Civilian car and motorcycle owners had to retard their ignitions as far as the magneto settings would allow - or in many cases have a "compression plate" fitted professionally to have the effect of enlarging the combustion chamber, thus reducing the compression ratio - to a ratio where crappy Pool wouldn't "pink" gurt big lumps out of the cylinder head!

 

Quite apart from the risks they ran, one can perhaps imagine Bomber Command aircrew taking a rather cavalier attitude to fuel rationing - with every Lancaster taking on 2,154 gallons for a big raid.

Nope, no rationing there, either........................

 

Every little bit counts when it comes to rationing and conserving. I've read an account once saying that it took about 200 lbs of paint to paint a single B-17. Since a gallon weighs about 8-9 pounds, the USAAF started leaving the bombers in the rough stainless steel looking finish. That way a bomber could carry 200 more pounds of bombs or fuel, or any combination thereof. Makes sense if you look at it that way. We had a LOT of bombers over there.

 

I don't think that was true in the US during WWII. US makers produced between one and three million cars a year during the thirties for a total population of 130 million, including kids, so there were a lot of cars.

 

Yeah, I remember my dad telling me that the rubber bicycle tires didn't last too long since he rode it all over creation and back. Back on the farm, he made some wooden wheels since no bicycle tires were made during the war. Wooden wheels on a bicycle didn't work so good. After awhile he donated the bike carcass to one of the many scrap metal drives held during the war. Later on, he started hopping slow moving freight trains. The farm was on US Hwy 51, which paralleled the Illinois Central RR, just a few miles south of town (school, movies, stores, etc). He'd jump out since they weren't going so fast being loaded to the gills with war materials, tanks, vehicles of every description, etc. The northbound trains would always slow down when they got to town, which made "disembarcation" that much easier. Desperate times always calls for desperate measures.

 

I am one of those that think the people of the 1940's in the United States that made up what has been called the "Greatest Generation" were not in the beginning so prosperous as our present thoughts about it all may like to create in our memories. My parents(now passed) remembered an epic long struggle to come out of the depression, remembering times that were often short of food, clothes, and all the other necessities of life. How brave they were to pull together when faced with war and endeavor to surmount the difficulties of waging a war against our enemies. Keep in mind that many of the gentlemen that the government tried to draft were often rejected for service, due to the poor diets of the depression, and other lingering health issues, that were present for that group. It was only after some health improvements, that some numbers were able to be drafted to serve, yet we easily forget the health issues that had to be overcome by them, in a time when people were just learning to use antibiotics and some other illnesses were still ravaging many people. In short what I am saying that often it was not by choice that this generation was able to do without...... often not by choice but by necessity....yet they were not full of complaints but were optimistic about nearly everything they faced. I would hope we all take example from how they surmounted the difficulties. Where my folks lived....a vehicle was a luxury but not always a successful one as the roads did not exist in a condition that made travel very practical by vehicle. A wagon was more dependable across the many sand washes or just by horseback if not a great deal had to be carried back from the trading. In my state on the reservations there was use of the horse and wagons into the 1950's and 1960's as they often adapted rubber tires to the wagons to increase their usefulness in those sand washes that would sink wagons and thin tired vehicles. In at least three of my neighbors yards parked as yard ornaments remain the wagons that were survivors of that era and they are very celebrated for how useful they once were. I always remember the story of MacArthur who moved by wagon as youngster from Fort Wingate as his father, who was in the military here at that time.(a New Mexico story) It is my wish that we remember them so well that we can take example from them to conquer the challenges of our own time....it is only by doing that ......that we will give them fitting respect for how they surmounted the difficulties of their day. Just my two cents thrown in for your interesting discussion.

 

Thank you, Victor -- I agree that those times were desperately hard, and extended right into the 1950s when I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan with very few luxuries.

 

I was not referring to the USA, of which I have no experience. I was referring to Britain in WW2, from personal experience.