The use of whale oil in war industries?

[Sid Guttridge]

I have just been reading about the German raider Pinguin capturing three Norwegian whalers and ten whale catchers in Antarctica.

This set me to wondering what role whale oil had in war industries (other than food production)?

I have found that the US used sperm whale oil in instruments aboard aircraft and submarines in the war, but in what instruments and why? Did it have properties not possessed by conventional oils?

Presumably the Germans found a wartime substitute for whale oil, so why was it still of value to the Allies?

Thanks.

[phylo_roadking]

OP, Whale oil was the best for high strength loading applications....precision instruments, industrial machinery - and automotive applications such as the transmission cases in Jeeps! When whales began to become scarce, the boffins came up with an additive rich lube that they called...ATF or automatic transmission fluid! By WWII the development of automatic transmissions was well underway, utilizing the qualities of whale oil. The torque converter's introduction right after the war gave the automatic transmission the technology required for acceptance by the driving public and by the 1950s automatics were the preferred transmission.

By the 1960s up to 30 million pounds of whale oil were used each year, chiefly as the main additive to automatic transmission and locking differential fluids. It was whale oil that made these devices so reliable and efficient and it was primarily the auto industry's requirements that maintained the demand for whaling during the mid-20th Century.
Automatic transmissions ran smoothly and reliably using whale oil in lubricating fluids, as long as engine coolant temperatures ran below 173 degrees F. However, by the 1970s engines became subject to tighter emissions regulations and engineers had to design them to run hotter. Other demands such as front-wheel-drive and ever-increased emissions limits boosted the operating temperatures of engines to well over 200 degrees F, forcing research efforts into synthetic lubricants and rendering the use of whale oil (really an esther, not an oil) obsolete. Technically, it was a long chain monoesther of fatty acids and fatty alcohols.

(fron 2nd Chance Garage)

Japan had no problems getting hold of it during the war; although limited to more familiar hunting grounds, such as the Bonin Islands, to provide meat and oil for domestic and military use, whaling there was only halted in March 1945 when the islands were taken by US forces.

Germany had been a large importer/consumer....and possibly stockpiler!...of it before the war; Japan didn't sign the Protocol to the International Agreement for the Regulation of Whaling in 1938 and violated it by taking Humpback and undersized whales beginning five weeks prior to the defined start of the season. By 1939 Germany (importing from Japan!) and Japan accounted for a whopping 30% of the world's whale take (businesshistory.com)

[Sid Guttridge]

Thankyou.

According to what I read in "The History of Modern Whaling" prior to my question, Germany's main source of whale oil before the war was Norway's Antarctic catch. In an effort to cut out the Norwegian middleman, from 1936-37 Germany started to deploy an Antarctic whaling fleet of its own. This, and a German Antarctic survey expedition at the end of 1938, stampeded the Norwegians into claiming a chunk of Antarctica in January 1939.

In whaling terms, the German occupation of Norway was badly timed as almost the entire Norwegian whaling fleet was then returning from Antarctica with that year’s production in its tanks and promptly fell into Allied hands.

Japan's Antarctic whaling fleet produced most of the country’s whale oil before 1942, but was then driven back on home waters. This boosted production in home waters somewhat, but nowhere near enough to compensate for the lost Antarctic catch.

[phylo_roadking]

One thing to remember about Norway as a source of whale oil for Germany is that the Commando raids on Vaagso and the Lofoten Islands destroyed a large part of what stockpile fell into German hands and a sizeable part of Norway's whale oil processing capability