JWE -> RE: AE Naval and OOB Issues (8/3/2009 6:16:51 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Buck Beach Can anybody come up with a link or basis for guesstimating the number of tankers dedicated to the theater at any one time? We could then add them from the names reflected in the site you provided even if a particular ship served the Atlantic, et al others. There isn’t any practical link, but there is a rational set assumptions and starting basis. We know exactly how many hulls, and their average tonnage, in the US fleet as of Jan. 1, 1940. We know exactly how many hulls, and their individual tonnage that were built (delivered) from Jan.1, 1940 to Jan. 1, 1942. And we know who got sunk. Then we determined how many tankers (qua tankers), of what types, were constructed (delivered) in each shipyard in each region of the US from Jan.1, 1942 till mid ’45; paying attention to West Coast deliveries. Then we determined things like raw crude transfers from well (pipe) termini to refinery sites (calc the tonnage required), from Oil Production Board figures. Then analyzed Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce figures for all refined product shipments to all recipients; Russia, Britain, General Lend-Lease, Africa Theater, Med Theater, Euro Theater, Pac Theater, SWPac Theater, Neutral Zone-Atlantic, Neutral Zone-Pacific (Chile, fx), Neutral Zone-Africa, Intranational (a BIG number, includes Mexico, Canada, Central America). From the individual annual “tons of gas” figures, we get a percentage of how many tons went where annually. Given that, we figured out what % of hulls could do that on an annual basis. We too were surprised at the result, but remembering that Nimitz was screaming for ‘tankers, tankers, tankers’, till mid ’44, I guess we shouldn’t have been. AFAIK this info is not presented anywhere else. We have so much data on this, and other aspects of the respective Pac Theater merchant fleets, the Don Bowen and I are thinking seriously about writing a book. Bottom line, to get Joe, Erik, and Matrix totally off the hook, if anybody wants to chew some butt over WiTP-AE merchant fleets, that butt would be mine. [edit] btw, used WiTP database as starting point,and just made sure capacity with respect to time was satisfied; that took a couple months. So ... thinking that concept and capability was more important then spelling (and, I was damn tired), didn't try to name everybody 'absolutely historically correctly'. Besides, nobody really knows what that means.
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