The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#361

Post by OpanaPointer » 22 Oct 2014, 19:35

Carl Schwamberger wrote:Problem with assumptions is they dont really settle anything. This debate on damaging the PH fuel tanks has gone round and round for years on multiple forums/threads with many participants and very few have attempted to do more than swap guesses or post a few photographs.

Unfortunatly I'm stalled on the subject of vapor off bunker fuel. Found that my informant on the subject died some time ago. John Mortenson a retired marine propulsion engineer with a career on cargo ships and previously a USN patrol boat crewman in Viet Nam passed after his second severe cardiac failure. I'd first met him three years ago as part of a group of veterans who helped restore his house to habital condition. So RiP John M.
There was nothing unique about the tanks, so somebody who does history of the petroleum industry would be able to help you.
So, what are the details of fire suppresion system?
Don't know, I read the citation for the Ensign, that's where I got the info. on the suppression system. But, again, you'd find the same systems on the Mainland, so the sources suggested above would be helpful, I do believe.
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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#362

Post by phylo_roadking » 22 Oct 2014, 21:18

Carl, as far as I'm aware, the "period" way of dealing with gasoline's volatiles outgassing in tankage was to flare it off; as a kid in the 1960s I remember the tank farm in Belfast port and its permanently-burning flare tower. It doesn't happen now - modern EU emmissions rules, health and safety issues in an urban areas etc., etc....

I've had a good look at the pic I posted up of the Pearl Harbour tank farm and I can't see anything resembling a flare tower. If the idea of "bunker fuel" was to reduce it to as safe and turgid a sticky tar as possible...then it's conceivable that the slow rate of remaining volatiles loss meant it could just be vented to atmosphere.
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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#363

Post by OpanaPointer » 22 Oct 2014, 21:24

You might find something relevant in here as well. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/GSBO/

(Typed from memory on my cell. Let me know if is FUBAR.)
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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#364

Post by RichTO90 » 22 Oct 2014, 22:16

phylo_roadking wrote:Carl, as far as I'm aware, the "period" way of dealing with gasoline's volatiles outgassing in tankage was to flare it off; as a kid in the 1960s I remember the tank farm in Belfast port and its permanently-burning flare tower. It doesn't happen now - modern EU emmissions rules, health and safety issues in an urban areas etc., etc....

I've had a good look at the pic I posted up of the Pearl Harbour tank farm and I can't see anything resembling a flare tower. If the idea of "bunker fuel" was to reduce it to as safe and turgid a sticky tar as possible...then it's conceivable that the slow rate of remaining volatiles loss meant it could just be vented to atmosphere.
Bunker C, AKA Fuel Oil No. 6, has negligible evaporation at any reasonable temperatures, so does not produce flammable vapors; its distillation fraction at 100 degrees C is fractionally less than that of crude, which is 5%. In contrast, the distillation fraction of gasoline is about 70% at 100 degrees C. There is no critically measurable "outgassing" of Bunker C at 24 degrees C, which is the mean temperature of Honolulu in December, so no need for a flare tower.

The diesel, gasoline, and AVGAS storage sites are different of course.


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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#366

Post by RichTO90 » 23 Oct 2014, 13:55

Carl Schwamberger wrote:Bunker & Fuel Oil No. Six
Indeed Carl, there are any number of sources that have been quoted over the years indicating the difficulty of getting Bunker C to ignite, its lack of vapor, and so on, all of which has been ignored, so I'm not sure of the utility of posting more I'm afraid?

It all comes down to the breathless exclamation "but Pembroke dockyard!", usually associated with various random - and usually incorrect - factoids (no, the exterior roof of a oil tank doesn't "float", but there is a floating interior "roof" normally found in those containing volatiles), assumptions (aircraft can carry all the bombs they can carry simultaneously), and leaps of faith (American naval officers routinely, stupidly, and culpably ignore maintenance of vital installations such as oil storage tanks, allowing them to become "rusty and corroded"). Curiously though, the Admiralty Oil Fuel Depot Pembroke remains an anomaly. In fact, at least two other AOFD's were bombed: Plymouth on 28 November 1940, which ignited one tank that wasn't suppressed until 1 December and Invergordon on 17 February 1941, which destroyed one tank and damaged another...but neither ignited. At Invergordon, the first tank held 4,000 tons (two-thirds full, assuming the standard Admiralty 6,000-ton tank) and about 2,000 tons "escaped over the bund wall into a railway cutting", while the second held 6,000 tons "most of which leaked away into the compound" of which 2,500 tons wasn't recovered (WAR CABINET OIL POSITION Monthly Report for February, 1941, submitted by the Secretary for Petroleum, p. 3). Examination of further Oil Position reports likely would reveal more cases, but given that none other than Pembroke caused any great notice, it is unlikely many other catastrophic cases will be identified and in any case I generally pass on tail-chasing exercises started by other posters. :roll:

Of course one point that remains unclear in all these cases is what exactly was in the tanks? The AOFD's primary role was storing bunker oil, but if the damaged tank at Invergordon "leaked" in the middle of February, then it is unlikely it contained a HFO, which simply don't flow easily in cold weather. Which could indicate that the tanks held one of the many other fuel oils, including gasoline, diesel, and other HFO's, stocked in an AOFD. So what was in the Pembroke tanks? In August 1940, another nine oil depots were attacked, none catastrophically and in December 1940 "a considerable number of incendiary bombs fell on oil installations and depots, but the damage done was slight" (WAR CABINET OIL POSITION Monthly Report for December, 1940, p. 3), and in 1941 Liverpool was hit "on the night of 7th/8th May, damage was sustained to various installations at Barton where 9 tanks were badly damaged or destroyed, and certain lubricating oil plants suffered considerably" (WAR CABINET OIL POSITION Monthly Report for May, 1941, p. 3), but no catastrophic fires again...so was what happened at Pembroke the norm or something unusual?

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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#367

Post by phylo_roadking » 25 Oct 2014, 21:20

The Pembroke fire is indeed very interesting, and there's more and more appearing on the net about it as the years go past...some of it in the strangest of places. Such as the website of the local golf club! Which records the circumstances immediately proceeding the raid in question...
Pembroke Dock had not been deemed worthy of much consideration in the country defence arrangements or even of a mention in the national news bulletins – until on Monday, August 19th, a German `plane flew up the harbour and dropped a bomb plumb on one of the Llanreath oil tanks. Two local children living in Bufferland actually waved to the pilot whom they could see and whom they believe waved back. The blaze, which followed, was one of the biggest in the history of Britain and, anti-aircraft guns began to arrive in the locality and barrage balloons appeared in the sky over Pembroke Dock. The raid at about 15:15 on the Monday afternoon and was made by three aircraft. They flew up the harbour very low and in quite leisurely fashion, turning south before reaching Pembroke Dock and then coming in again to approach the tanks from the direction of Monkton.Workmen engaged on trenching around the tanks looked up at the approaching `planes and thought they were British. Then the bomber dived in and the men ran for shelter. Firebombs were dropped and a hit was obtained on a tank holding 12,000 tons of oil. A great tongue of flame shot up and clouds of black, thick, oily smoke billowed high into the sky. Within seconds it was obvious for many miles around that the tanks were burning.
...and that reads like a very low level, very accurate approach and attack. Hardly the sort of accuracy that could obtained from 10,000 feet...

So what was in the Pembroke tanks?
On a thread on the Airfield Information Exchange forum I found the following Admiralty pro forma from 1942 posted up...

Image

What's interesting about that pro forma is the legend on the right hand side - the list of oil fuels types that COULD be stored in the tanks at Llanreath when that pro forma was drawn up - obviously BEFORE the fire! So at least now you've got a finite list to work from of what could have been in the tank(s) on the 19th of August.
Last edited by phylo_roadking on 25 Oct 2014, 21:48, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#368

Post by RichTO90 » 25 Oct 2014, 21:47

phylo_roadking wrote:Image

What's interesting about that pro forma is the legend on the right hand side - the list of oil fuels types that COULD be stored in the tanks at Llanreath when that pro forma was drawn up - obviously BEFORE the fire! So at least now you've got a finite list to work from of what could have been in the tank(s) on the 19th of August.
I'm sure it would be interesting if it was viewable...

[edit] Well that's bizarre, now its viewable?

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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#369

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 25 Oct 2014, 21:54

When I'm not logged in I cant view attachments.

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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#370

Post by phylo_roadking » 25 Oct 2014, 21:55

"Mixtures other than authorised mixtures....."
I really do not like the sound of that - that the Admiralty was so used to making exceptions to what should officially be stored in the Llanreath tanks that they created a specific symbol for it on their pro forma...! 8O

The BIG blue Xs on that pro forma don't by the way repesent that mixture....according to the AIX member that posted it up those are the tanks that were destroyed in 1940; the Admiralty didn't bother creating a new pro forma when they were destroyed, they just crossed them out thereafter...and just kept on using the old pre-raid pile of forms! :P Interesting that they kept two tanks filled with water for firefighting...
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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#371

Post by RichTO90 » 25 Oct 2014, 22:24

phylo_roadking wrote:I really do not like the sound of that - that the Admiralty was so used to making exceptions to what should officially be stored in the Llanreath tanks that they created a specific symbol for it on their pro forma...! 8O

The BIG blue Xs on that pro forma don't by the way repesent that mixture....according to the AIX member that posted it up those are the tanks that were destroyed in 1940; the Admiralty didn't bother creating a new pro forma when they were destroyed, they just crossed them out thereafter...and just kept on using the old pre-raid pile of forms! :P Interesting that they kept two tanks filled with water for firefighting...
Or the blue X's and the blue "water" were filled in the same time...after the attack and fire? Closing the barn door after so to speak?

Meanwhile, if any of those tanks was filled with "Trinidad" during the attack, the results of the attack become a bit more understandable. :lol:

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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#372

Post by phylo_roadking » 25 Oct 2014, 23:06

Or the blue X's and the blue "water" were filled in the same time...after the attack and fire? Closing the barn door after so to speak?
Well, the particular copy of the pro forma in question does supposedly date from 1942 - so given that that's two years after the fire, and it does say on the form that the two tanks were for "fire fighting"...

I can see some poor Admiralty clerk being sat down with a pile of blank forms and a blue pencil and being told to mark up a thousand or so for future use...that's almost as English as them continuing to use the same form despite all the destruction :D

Also, if you turn the picture upside down in your mind..

Image

...to match this pic taken of the late stages of the fire...

Image

...we can see that the marked-up/x'd-out tanks on the form do indeed match the tanks damaged/destroyed during the fire. Remember, they were never rebuilt.

Interestingly - the Luftwaffe bombed the middle of the tank farm, and the fire seems to have worked its way out "tank by tank" - as several descriptions of the fire say - to the edge. So even at low level their accuracy wasn't that remarkable...they had a bloody big target to aim for! In fact - four bombs from the stick missed entirely, and only one hit...the last one in the stick...

Image

It could so easily have been a miss.
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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#373

Post by OpanaPointer » 25 Oct 2014, 23:32

Note also that all tanks within a berm either burned or didn't burn. If there had been individual berms around each tank, as at Pearl, how many would have burned?
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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#374

Post by phylo_roadking » 25 Oct 2014, 23:46

One of the accounts of the first day of the fire I've read records that the oil spilled out of the ruptured tank, filled the "ditch" around it, and went on fire. So it wouldn't have been possible to shut the manual valves on the rest of the tanks in that segment of the berm. Matters weren't helped on the 19th of August by the fact that the Pembroke Dock fire brigade...the first responders that day...were only an AFS detachment under Albert Morris - who was very regrettably left out of the large number of bravery awards given out to firefighters after the fire - and help had to be asked for and sent from brigades all over that part of the country; although the AFS first responders that day did their utmost, the AFS' fire hoses and pumps couldn't reach the tanks to keep them cool across the width of the oilfilled berms...! And throughout the emergency they were having to fabricate makeshift protection out of corrugated iron sheeting etc.. One account mentioned that the water pressure was difficult to maintain, and that it dropped off especially at low tide...so they must have "daisy chained" AFS/NFS pumps to pump seawater; these pumps were designed for that purpose, any number could be daisy chained in a row to cover considerable distances. But that would also hint to me that that's why after the 19th August 1940 attack they kept two full tanks filled with water onsite at Llanreath - for both quantity and head of pressure up on top of the hill.

There are quite a few references in eye witness accounts and memories of the events about oil dropping out of the sky like black rain when individual tanks blew, oil spurting from ruptured tanks...even a wave of oil running down the main street of the town at one stage! None of which reads like tar-like bunker oil, but something much lighter and viscous..?

Just as a matter of interest - I don't suppose we happen to know where the flying boat base at RAF Pembroke Dock bunkered their...aviation spirit? 8O
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Re: The invasion of Oahu, December 1941.

#375

Post by RichTO90 » 26 Oct 2014, 00:40

phylo_roadking wrote:Just as a matter of interest - I don't suppose we happen to know where the flying boat base at RAF Pembroke Dock bunkered their...aviation spirit? 8O
In the tanks marked Trinidad I would suspect...

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