Aviation fuel on battleships and cruisers

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elk
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Aviation fuel on battleships and cruisers

Post by elk »

Hello there,
I'm looking for info about the amount of aviation fuel that BBs and CA/CLs carried for their floatplanes. There's a lot of data for various classes of CVs on this topic but very few for other aircraft equipped ships. All I found was about Iowas: 22.8 cubic metres. I would be grateful for any help
Thorsten Wahl
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Re: aviation fuel on battleships and cruisers

Post by Thorsten Wahl »

Bismarck 34 t
Scharnhorst 25,5 t
Meine Herren, es kann ein siebenjähriger, es kann ein dreißigjähriger Krieg werden – und wehe dem, der zuerst die Lunte in das Pulverfaß schleudert!
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Herr Nilsson
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Re: aviation fuel on battleships and cruisers

Post by Herr Nilsson »

Thorsten Wahl wrote:Bismarck 34 t
That're 40 cubic metres.
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Marc

"Thank God we blow up and sink more easily." (unknown officer from HMS Norfolk)
Byron Angel
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Re: aviation fuel on battleships and cruisers

Post by Byron Angel »

Herr Nilsson wrote:
Thorsten Wahl wrote:Bismarck 34 t
That're 40 cubic metres.

..... It depends upon whether that "34t" figure is expressing pure weight or reflects stowage capacity. 1mt (2,204.62 lbs) = 1 cubic meter = 35.314cf for cargo stowage purposes.

If the 34t (almost certainly metric tons) figure represents weight, then, given that gasoline is lighter than water, 40 cubic meter makes sense.


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Herr Nilsson
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Re: aviation fuel on battleships and cruisers

Post by Herr Nilsson »

In the Kriegsmarine aviation fuel ("Benzin-Benzol") had a specific weight of 0.85 in weight list calculations.

Bismarck had 4 tanks with a total stowage capacity of 40,000 l.
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Marc

"Thank God we blow up and sink more easily." (unknown officer from HMS Norfolk)
elk
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Re: aviation fuel on battleships and cruisers

Post by elk »

Thanks a lot. On ww2forums i got figures for Vittorio Veneto : 17t
That's 4 classes of battleships but nothig about cruisers :(
thank you for help once again
Keith Enge
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Re: Aviation fuel on battleships and cruisers

Post by Keith Enge »

The amount carried is surprisingly uniform across navies and ship types (excluding carriers); ships tended to carry around 2000 gallons per aircraft. That's US gallons, not Imperial gallons. Aviation gas weighs about 6 pounds per gallon so that's about 6 tons of avgas per aircraft. This 2000 gallon per aircraft even seems to apply to those submarines that carried aircraft. There were 47 aircraft carrying submarines that had an average of 1.3 planes each. The average of avgas carried was 2596 gallons carried or almost exactly 2000 gallons per plane.
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RF
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Re: Aviation fuel on battleships and cruisers

Post by RF »

I believe that some of the hilfskreuzer carried rather more aviaton fuel in view of the timespan of their voyages, but I haven't seen precise figures on this.
Also the specialist German naval tankers such as Altmark/Uckermark carried substantial cargo of such fuel - in the case of Uckermark played a significant role in the ships destruction in Yokohama.
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