Yamato's fuel situation-Nov 42?

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KilonBerlin
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Re: Yamato's fuel situation-Nov 42?

Post by KilonBerlin »

Driving fast is always "costly", for us normal people in most cases at the gasoline station... but many ships can reduce consumption by 50% with only going a few knots lower... Best Example: Yamato at full speed did need 70 tons fuel per hour! It was also used, like Tirpitz to refuel smaller nearby ships in some situations, since only the US with its almost endless industrial and ressource potential had a large "army" of "replenishment oilers", which also had food, water, ammo but mostly fuel... alone these ships together consumed much oil the Axis did not had (or ironic, they had but did not know what they were standing on in Algeria, Libya and also in Netherland (Gröningen Gas Field, could power whole Ruhrgebiet and more, as secret as possible smaller fields close to Norwegian coast could have been drilled for a time when British would not know that).

War was lost faster because of oil IMHO! But since we all are here I prefer this timeline and not one with Axis Powers with the giant oil fields under their controll, only way would have been "Operation Walküre" of 1944 Stauffenberg. Killing Hitler and all his henchmen and arrest SS-Troops and than negotiate... if I were patriotic (I'm not, no real German even strictly seen) I would say this would be a good plan, to kill Hitler in late 1940, when many European countries already have been tanken but mass Murder did not start...

Like the British and US the Germans could have made after-war cash with their special infos^^

Right now where ship diesel, residual fuel or heavy oil for ship propulsion is cheap many ships which are able to cross Sues Canal (it was upgraded some years ago so that even deeper ships could pass it, and a 2nd parallel route was created... but they take over 400,000 US-$ for large ships, or they took in 2012... now I think even more. Egypt needs this money, but more often ships drive through whole Africa... no pirates since they do not drive close to Somali pirate Area, low speed, and the cash for the small crew does not really matter...

New Ships are also build at sizes where they will never can use Panama or even Sues Canal... and it is unlikely that the US-$ price per barrel goes up to 100%.

Driving cars gets really expensive at 120 km/h and higher, real bad at 180 km/h for most models... and on the Autobahn when we drive already 120-140 km/h sometimes a car on the 2nd lane drives so fast that we see him only a few seconds, meaning he is driving over 200 km/h... this can make an expensive car using 25 liters per 100 kilometer... and also on "non luxurary"-cars it gets really heavy above 200, since in some medium-cars the engine must give 80% of the possible maximum speed (no electric blocker at 250km/h), so the medium-class car motor really runs near limit than... now with low oil prices the tempo is increasing a bit on the roads, and new bought cars.. fuel efficient once was one of the most important points... now it is still, but not that important anymore....
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Dave Saxton
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Re: Yamato's fuel situation-Nov 42?

Post by Dave Saxton »

Hard to believe its been more than 10 years since that post. Tirpitz got better fuel efficiency than expected by the design in actual combat operations. And cruising at 25 knots would have used significantly less fuel than Yamato or most any other battleship cruising at 25 knots. Usually warships use much more fuel than their designers anticipate during real world operations.

We don't know the quality of fuel (how much energy per liter) used in various calculations, tests, and combat operations, though. We know as pointed out by Schmalenbach that a primary reason that the Hippers used so much fuel was the very poor quality of the fuel received when refueling at sea. Had the fuel been of higher quality then they would have probably not used more fuel than they were designed to use. They were forced to operate at fairly high speeds, nevertheless. They didn't have the luxury of being able to cruise at 19 or less knots.

In your car analogy, I think your probably about right, based on my experience, that around 80mph is the optimal speed for most modern autos to get the best fuel efficiency. There are many variables: gear ratios, cams, tires, aerodynamics, wind speed and direction..... I can refer to my old Ford Mustang. It has an overdrive transmission with 0.63 drive ratio in overdrive, and 3.55 final drive ratio, using 26" tall tires. At 80 mph it gets 27 mpg. If I slow down to 65 mph the efficiency drops to 21 mpg. And if I drive much faster than 80 mph the efficiency drops down to 21 mpg also. I just got back from a 900 mile road trip going 80 mph as much as possible. The car (not the old mustang) got 33 mpg. Previously it got as much as 36 mpg on similar road trips, but I changed the spark plugs from platinum electrodes to copper last time around. Usually copper electrode plugs improve fuel efficiency because they produce a larger flame kernal. But this design uses two spark plugs per combustion chamber and I suspect the higher arc temperature of platinum electrodes is more important than the kernal size in this design.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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