[hanamizu]

Realize that a modern aircraft carrier would only have enough modern jet fuel as she holds

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I was surprised when I read “Neptune’s Inferno” how constrained the US Navy was by fuel supply in the early part of the war. There weren’t enough tankers on hand to supply the Navy’s needs. I realize that jet aircraft fuel (if available) wouldn’t require the tanker fleet that the oil-fired WWII Navy required, but still.

[StoneRainbow68]

I read Victor Davis Hanson’s latest WW2 book, and was amazed when I read the US produced 90% of all aviation fuel used in the entire war.

Anybody declaring war on the US, Soviet Union and the British nearly simultaneously must have been a damned fool. And he was.

[Rurudyne]

Had the Japanese spared the fleet and bombed the fuel tanks (only significant fuel stores west of California) they might have got their negotiated peace.

[Calvin Locke]

There were tankers, but 3/4's or so got assigned to the European Theater.

Hence, the paucity of BBs in most of the early battles around Guadalcanal. Or as somebody put it, once navies started steaming into battle, fuel became a factor.

There was a recent posting about the Russo-Japanese War, and "The Voyage of the Damned" (see U2B for whole sad trip), the second Russian fleet to fight against the Japanese. For some strange reason, the Russians didn't fill up on coal before making the final leg to Vladivostok. Japan had its spies, and the IJN admiral correctly guessed that the czarists were going to have to take the shorter route, so he was able to stage the majority of his ships accordingly.

During WWI, the fairly new oil-fired USS Arizona was limited to the Eastern US seaboard because the Brits were still coal-based, and were incapable of refueling it (as well as the threat of U-boats.)