Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
the chance that there is no avgas at all left is not realistic - there is no way that every tank at every airport, every storage terminal, every railcar, etc.. is gone - we know France has avgas for instance - and where there is a scarce supply there is a black market - so no matter how well guarded and rationed it is some will make it to the Germans and Brits and Americans
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In addition, the vast majority of US aircraft use JP-8 (I've seen TONS of this) or JP-12 (never used this newer jet fuel). This is a form of purified kerosene NOT Avgas (which is high test gasoline). Avgas requires several steps to produce a sufficiently pure and high powered gasoline. This can only be done using Light-Sweet Crude oil. This oil can only be found in the Middle East and a few wells in Romania and Nigeria. Thus, small aircraft like the Cesna, who are dependent on Avgas, would be grounded by a lack of fuel. The bulk of the world's remaining Crude is heavier silted crude more suitable for Fuel Oil or Diesel. This crude COULD be refined into Kerosene but the cost would be greater. However, Virgin Airlines proved that you can fly a large airliner on purified Biodiesel so the large transport aircraft could still be flying.
One more note about fuel. There would be plenty of JP-8 in any US Theater after 1990. The US Army began a program called "One Fuel Forward" in 1989. This program removed ALL gas powered support vehicles from service (all the Chevy and Dodge SUVs, all Jeeps, and all other gas powered equipment but the Abrams). All of the remaining Diesels were then given JP-8 jet fuel to run so that the Army was only trucking one fuel type to the front. This did set off The Law of Unintended Consequences though. This fuel had detergents in it that scrubbed "scale" from vehicles that had used the dirtier Diesel. We were going through a fuel filter about every three weeks for about six months. We would have been in BIG trouble if we had to deploy during the fuel change (which was completed in August of 1990).