Re: WI: Yamamoto has a further realization

If it's so obvious, why do you need it pointing out to you?

And it didn't fire "bullets", either.

Poor evasion, Al. Machine guns fire bullets, cannons fire shells, and
the guys on the receiving end care quite a lot about the difference.

On Jul 7, 4:57 pm, "Paul J. Adam"
<paulNOT.jTHESE.adamB...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Really?  Next you will be telling me bears sh.t it the woods!

In terms of firepower what was the main weapon of the Japanese Zero?

I'll give you a hint, it was not the 7.7 mm.

If you are going to get all wrapped up too tight for New Orleans, you
can claim the 20 mm are not machine guns, but tell it to someone who
has been shot at by one.

So what calibres did the Japanese bring? Apart from the 20mm on the
A6Ms, all their air weapons were 7.7mm at that point.

On Jul 7, 2:59 am, "Paul J. Adam"
<paulNOT.jTHESE.adamB...@googlemail.com> wrote:

I did not state what caliber of machine gun now did I?

Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if
From: Alfred Montestruc <montest...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 21:20:50 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Sun 5 July 2009 05:20
Subject: Re: WI: Yamamoto has a further realization

"By looking at the photos in the paper I can tell that they did build
containment levees around each of the tanks, but for cry yi dude all
it takes to set one on fire is a few tracer rounds from a machine gun
burst"

None of which is a storage tank full of bunker oil.

On Jul 6, 1:48 am, "Paul J. Adam"
<paulNOT.jTHESE.adamB...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Cite it.

And lots of other things besides including aircraft in the air and on
the ground exploding after being hit by HMG fire.

isn't particularly

Al, you specified one or two 7.7mm bullets into a fuel oil storage tank
as being enough for certain ignition.

Showing us footage of steam locomotives blowing up isn't particularly
relevant to that... can you find us some images of oil storage tanks
going up from a couple of hits? If not, do you think there might be a
reason why not?

One thing that some folks on that  seem to miss is that Bunker C is
normally stored at a temperature high enough to let it flow and be
pumped without much issue.  Bunker "C" at room temperature may be
difficult to light up, but it is also solid.  Bunker C is stored in
heated tanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil#Bunker_fuel

-------------------quote-------------------
No. 6 oil must, in fact, be stored at around 100 ℉ (37.8 ℃) heated to
150 ℉ (65.6 ℃)–250 ℉ (121.1 ℃) before it can be easily pumped, and in
cooler temperatures it can congeal into a tarry semisolid. The flash
point of most blends of No. 6 oil is, incidentally, about 150 ℉ (65.6
℃)
--------------end quote -------
Elsewhere on that page it lists the flash point of #6 oil as 60 C
which is well under 65.6 C.

The flash point is the minimum temperature at which it can ignite in
air.

Note that in order to be pump able it must be stored at a temperature
above it's flash point, and if it is not pump able how do you keep it
from going solid in a tank that damn big?  You will wind up with the
stuff congealing on the walls, and if the exit pipe is near the
bottom, then you have a huge heat sink, heat will flow out to the
ground as fast or faster than to the side walls.  So to protect the
exit pipe you can insulate the tank, and heat it at 100 F then heat it
up and wait a few days (given the mass of oil the tank and the
problems of heat transfer rates that do not cause local chemical
changes on the HX, or monster huge HX that are expensive as all hell)
for the mix to get to 150F so you can pump it.  Or you can leave it at
150 F.   I do not think the navy would go for the former.

You cannot just leave it in an unheated condition and be able to use
it, and if you must heat it at all, and must be able to heat it to 150
F to pump it, why not leave it at 150 all the time?

Then their is the issue of the storage of other fuels that do not have
such high flash points.  Imagine a Zero doing a strafing run on
typical above ground heated oil tank holding bunker C at over 150 F,
or Avgas, ,

Mr Adams is thinking that mythbusters is a good source for such.  Then
maybe he look at the below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQTfXVqNo9A

No explosions caused by shooting it up with 20 mm guns there!!  Right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89b3vVwMDDY

No explosions caused by shooting things up with 0.50 caliber HMGs guns
there!!  Right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejnxLN0MAlU

or there! Right?

Paul J. Adam wrote:

       And that's the real point!  Bunker C does *not* ignite easily, even
less so than Diesel!  Bunker C is the dregs of the oil barrel, with all the
volatile, easily ignited stuff distilled out.

       I know that #6 fuel oil/Bunker C has to be heated in several stages
to be used in Diesel engines, indeed it's only used in the very largest
ones.  It has to be kept hot even for storage, preheated for use and
atomized with fairly high-pressure steam in burners.

       As to what it would take to start a tank fire, you'd have to do
direct tests.  I'm sure it would be *more* difficult to ignite than crude
oil, since the volatiles have been distilled out.

Dennis

Check your claims more carefully.

http://www.mythbustersfanclub.com/mb2/content/view/36/27/

"Jamie fires a single tracer round into the half-filled gas tank. The
gas tank was hit but it did not ignite.

In the second run, Jamie fires a full clip of rounds and it did not
cause the gas tank to ignite.

In the third test, all of the MythBusters fire at the gas tank with
tracer rounds. After 75 gun shots, the gas tank did not explode.

In the last test them move the tank 50 feet back, Jamie fires several
rounds and finally one of them ignites the tank."

There's also the trivial point that tracer bullets don't ignite "from
air friction", they're ignited by the propellant while still in the barrel.

To reprise, "In the third test, all of the MythBusters fire at the gas
tank with tracer rounds. After 75 gun shots, the gas tank did not explode."

On your typical A6M, you've got two RCMG with - let's be generous - one
round in five being tracer and another being incendiary. To get
seventy-five tracer and incendiary rounds into one storage tank, you
need nearly two hundred rounds on target. That's a ten-second burst -
not doable in a single strafing pass - assuming your eagle-eyed Japanese
pilot can get every single round on target. And that's not enough to
reliably set off gasoline, let alone bunker oil.

On Jul 5, 5:55 am, "Paul J. Adam"
<paulNOT.jTHESE.adamB...@googlemail.com> wrote:

That would be incorrect.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode38

"It has already been proven that when shot by a normal bullet a
gasoline tank will not explode. However, if a gasoline tank is shot by
a tracer round from a great enough distance so that the round can
ignite with air friction, it will cause the gasoline to catch fire."

I specified incendiary ammo, which Japanese fighters normally used,
and shooting from a strafing aircraft which means several hundred
meters range at least.

A short burst including at least one tracer round into each oil tank
would be all that was required to ignite more than half of the tanks
then the already burning tanks would set off adjacent tanks that were
leaking from 20mm cannon fire.

Mythbusters tried this. They had to reduce a car's gasolene tank to
Swiss cheese with an assortment of calibres of tracer rounds before they
finally got an ignition.

Doesn't indicate that a storage tank of bunker oil will go up from a
couple of hits...

On surface tank farms loaded with fuel oil?  Yup!

Look it seems pretty obvious to me you did not read the paper.  Please
go back and do that, then:

You do not need bombs, just incendiary machine gun bullets.

Look I guess you have little oil patch experience, but tank farm fires
have a habit of getting out of hand, and are very destructive and
difficult to put out, and in the late 1930's early 1940s we are not
talking sophisticated tank farm systems that are well designed to
resist fires.

Neighboring tanks have a bad habit of setting each on fire once one is
on fire with splashed flaming fuel.

By looking at the photos in the paper I can tell that they did build
containment levees around each of the tanks, but for cry yi dude all
it takes to set one on fire is a few tracer rounds from a machine gun
burst.  Two or three fighters could have been detailed to do that
job.  As in do a strafing run on a row of oil tanks and set ~ 80% of
that row on fire, then the next and so on.  The probability of the USN
salvaging even 10% of the oil in surface tanks is low.

nobody is that bad on tank farms

as in hundreds of tons of very flammable oil kept in large ~ 200 ft +
diameter tanks with maybe 1/2" steel plate side walls and much less
top of tank walls.

a few machine gun bullets will rip open the tank, a few tracer rounds
with than and you have a fire, such fires get out of hand fast.

Long after (more than 9 months) Pearl Harbor, so from your own
evidence 0.0 % of the 4.5 million BBLs or 189 million gallons of fuel
was below ground on 7 December 1941, so 100% was easy picking for a
plane with a machine gun with tracer ammo.

the first of four Tanks(each 12.6M gallon),

FYI 4.5 million BBL is 189 million gallons  that 12.6 million gallons
is 0.3 million BBL and less than half the 0.75 Million BBL the Pacific
Fleet burned in the 9 days after 7 Dec 1941.  Point taken?

Again long long after Pearl Harbor and would have been a real pain in
the a.s to fill if IJN subs were sinking a large fraction of US oil
tankers off the pacific coast of CONUS.

Yes they would do it EVENTUALLY, but this is disagreeing with Nimitz's
estimation of two years added to the war how?

This is what the paper reports.  It may be that he includes wastage of
ships sunk, it also may be that many ships outside of Pearl were
ordered to make high speed surface runs that are wasteful as all hell
of fuel, like carriers zig-zagging at  or near flank speed to evade
torpedos.

Regardless it is what the paper report.

BBL or gallons and WHEN?  Would you mind citing a source, I did.

The 5th fleet when?  The US 5th fleet did not exist till 1944, and was
a fraction of the total US Pacific fleet at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Fifth_Fleet

In 1944, not in 1942 or 1943.  It took time to build all the ships
used to make the logistics possible and that was the whole point.  The
US Navy would make very little headway till the supply of tankers and
transport ships allows it.

Not going to happen w/o logistical support.

And they would be able to do 100% destruction?
Nobody is that good, even with smart bombs

The Red Hill complex was Top Secret, but quick googling
shows that the first Tank had been leak tested and ready
on 9-26-1942, the first of four Tanks(each 12.6M gallon),
but had been decided to expand to a total of 20 Tanks,
252 Million Gallons, all finished in 1943.

Now had some terrible calamity befell all the Aboveground
Tanks, don't you think the USN would have forgone some
of OTLs leak testing,as well as using more than OTLs 3900
workers[1] to get something going?

I find the 750k figure for 9 days a bit odd--- 83K per day?
The US 5th Fleet, at peak combat , used around 93K/day,
and that was with a lot more ships than what was active
12/1941.

2nd note that amount burned per day in 1944: that
rate would have sucked the tankage dry in under two
months, but the US was able to ship refined Texas and
Cali Oil over to CENPAC combat commands, as well
as everywhere else on Earth, without it having to
be discharged first at Pearl

[1] 15000 Seabees on Tinian making airfields

**
mike
**

Read the paper.  Cite the underground storage and show me what the
capacity of that storage was on 7 December 1941.  Recall what I cited
from the paper about the US Pacific Fleet burning through 750,000 BBLs
of fuel oil in the nine days following Pearl Harbor, and the fact that
the total storage capacity of those tanks was 4.5 million BBL.

Without oil the fleet does nada.

Would take major rewiring in what passed for brains
of IJN Skippers to ignore juicy warships for Oilers,

and giving near total destruction of above ground tankage
(doubtful), you leave out the Red Hill _underground_
fuel storage being constructed before a single bomb
was dropped.

Offhand, 1st major effect is that the Bataan probably holds
out, given an intact USN will escort in  convoys

**
mike
**

Reference material the below is a link to an academic paper published
in the US Air Force Journal of Logistics, entitled "Oil Logistics in
the Pacific War" by Lt. Col. P.H. Donovan USAF in volume XXVIII number
1 of that journal

http://www.aflma.hq.af.mil/lgj/Vol%2028%20No%201%20www.pdf

In this work among many other things  Donovan points out the real bind
the US Navy would have been put into if during the attack on Pearl
Harbor the Japanese had ignored warships and attacked oil tanks, and
fleet oil tankers only.  Nimitz is quoted by him as stating that "Had
the Japanese destroyed the oil (at Pearl Harbor), it would have
prolonged the war another two years."

In this paper it is also well documented that the Pearl Harbor attack
was Yamamoto's idea and he had to threaten to resign   as CIC of the
IJN to push the plan through, as it went strongly against Japanese
Naval doctrine to that time.

Suppose he has a further epiphany, caused in part perhaps by the
logistical necessities that were pushing Japan to war?  He realizes
the critical nature of the ability of Pearl Harbor to stockpile ~ 4.5
million BBL of oil at any given time, and that wrecking of the
facilities at Pearl would drastically reduce the capability of  the US
Navy to operate in the western Pacific, further that setting his
submarines on duty to specifically attack all US oil tankers, would
further cripple the ability of the US Navy to retaliate against Japan,
or otherwise meddle with Japanese plans.

In the paper Donovan documents how a specific fleet oil tanker that
had been sitting at anchor at Pearl Harbor, was not attacked, and had
been critical to the US Navy logistics at the Battle of Guadalcanal.

Further the US Navy oil tankers in the Pacific Fleet in late 1941 had
a combined total capacity of 760,000 BBL of oil, and within  9 days of
the attack at Pearl Harbor the US Pacific Fleet had burned 750,000
BBL.  This goes to show the deep dependence of the US Pacific fleet on
the tank farms at Pearl, which were quite vulnerable to attack.

So, WI Yamamoto realizes this, and  has the attack at Pearl Harbor
focus on the real vulnerability of the US Pacific Fleet, the tank
farms, and after that has all Japanese long range subs tasked to sink
US tankers sailing off the US coast or from Panama.  This may result
in a very different Pacific war.  In the end I am sure Japan loses due
to the atomic bomb, but still, the differences will be huge.

Comments?