Naval Fuel From France

[jwsleser]

Sorry, I am in Europe at this time. I should be able to look it up next week.

[jwsleser]

I apologize for the delay. Wonderful time in Europe, but back to the grind....

First a correction. The source for the 3.572K tons of fuel is volume III p. 27, not volume II. Typo on my part. Starting on p. 26, the actual sentence reads...

All in all, the [Italian] army, navy, and air force consumed some 5,312,000t of fuel between June 1940 and and the armistice in September 1943. Given the above mentioned stockpiles, to which must be added German deliveries of at least 3,572,000t and 860,000t from Italian production, it follows that only some 1.3m t. would have been available for civilian consumption throughout those thirty-nine months.

Volume III pp. 25-39 has a detailed discussion of the Italian economic situation during this period.

v/r Jeff

[Carl Schwamberger]

The Regia Marina took over the French naval fuel and lubricants captured in the bases of Toulon, Bizerte and Bastia in November 1942, for a total of 21,900 t of fuel and 4,599 t of lubricants.

This 22,000 tons of fuel looks trivial in light of the 800,000+ tons of Italian production & three million plus of imports. Still it may have been a welcome momentary boost for the Italian fleet in Novembe-December 1942.

[Brady]

The Regia Marina took over the French naval fuel and lubricants captured in the bases of Toulon, Bizerte and Bastia in November 1942, for a total of 21,900 t of fuel and 4,599 t of lubricants.

This 22,000 tons of fuel looks trivial in light of the 800,000+ tons of Italian production & three million plus of imports. Still it may have been a welcome momentary boost for the Italian fleet in Novembe-December 1942.

This does not Include the Fuel in the Ships they took possession of ?

[DrG]

I apologize for the delay. Wonderful time in Europe, but back to the grind....

First a correction. The source for the 3.572K tons of fuel is volume III p. 27, not volume II. Typo on my part. Starting on p. 26, the actual sentence reads...

All in all, the [Italian] army, navy, and air force consumed some 5,312,000t of fuel between June 1940 and and the armistice in September 1943. Given the above mentioned stockpiles, to which must be added German deliveries of at least 3,572,000t and 860,000t from Italian production, it follows that only some 1.3m t. would have been available for civilian consumption throughout those thirty-nine months.

Volume III pp. 25-39 has a detailed discussion of the Italian economic situation during this period.

v/r Jeff

Thank you, now the mystery is solved: Schreiber, in his essay in the MGFA volume, has badly copied a wrong datum.
Let's start from his sentence: he writes about "at least" 3,572,000 t of fuel (without distinction between crude oil, fuel oil, gasoline, diesel, etc.). This datum comes directly from the only source he provides, i.e. the book "Tecnica della sconfitta" by Franco Bandini, published in 1963. And, frankly, from a semi-official German history of WW2 I would have expected a better source than a book written 32 years before by an Italian journalist (one of the finest journalists and a very good historian, indeed, but who never did archival research, basing his books on published sources or on interviews with the protagonists and their acquaintances - such as secretaries, drivers, widows, friends, etc. -).

But here there are two problems:
1) Bandini did not state that it was "at least" 3,572,000 t, the "at least" is absent in his text;
2) the source of Bandini, in turn, was an estimate made by gen. Carlo Favagrossa who, in page 97 of his book "Perché perdemmo la guerra", published in 1946 and based both on the documents he kept from his assignment as Minister of War Production and his recollections, provided a table of the Italian average annual imports during the War.

And here comes the third and most important problem: Favagrossa stated that the average import of "carburanti e lubrificanti" ("fuels and lubricants") was of 1,100,000 t per year from every source, not from Germany alone. Then Bandini, given the 39 months of Italian war, calculated the datum of 3,572,000 t, but turned it into fuel alone (forgetting the lubricants) and, most importantly, turning the imports from every source into imports from Germany alone!

So, to summarize:
1) Favagrossa published an estimate in 1946 of 1,100,000 t of fuels and lubricants imported by Italy per year;
2) Bandini calculated in 1963 that it meant a total of 3,572,000 t, but he interpreted this datum as if it were made only of fuel (no lubricants) imported from Germany alone (ignoring Romania, etc.);
3) Schreiber, in 1995, further misinterpreted Bandini, adding the words "at least" and, despite the fact that he was writing for the MGFA, with full access to German archives (and to the Italian ones too, given that he is fluent in Italian language and has published a book also with the Historical Office of the Italian Army), and the fact that Angela Raspin's book was already known, he did not do any archival research and just used an old Italian book as his sole and even distorted source!

Conclusion: Schreiber has made us waste our time.

[DrG]

The Regia Marina took over the French naval fuel and lubricants captured in the bases of Toulon, Bizerte and Bastia in November 1942, for a total of 21,900 t of fuel and 4,599 t of lubricants.

This 22,000 tons of fuel looks trivial in light of the 800,000+ tons of Italian production & three million plus of imports. Still it may have been a welcome momentary boost for the Italian fleet in Novembe-December 1942.

This does not Include the Fuel in the Ships they took possession of ?

AFAIK, no. But French naval units were almost all sabotaged and thus their fuel tanks were mixed with sea water. At best there were some thousands of tons in the tanks of the merchant ships, and only those with diesel engines or fuel-oil-fired boilers.

[DrG]

The Regia Marina took over the French naval fuel and lubricants captured in the bases of Toulon, Bizerte and Bastia in November 1942, for a total of 21,900 t of fuel and 4,599 t of lubricants.

This 22,000 tons of fuel looks trivial in light of the 800,000+ tons of Italian production & three million plus of imports. Still it may have been a welcome momentary boost for the Italian fleet in Novembe-December 1942.

At the end of 1942 the Regia Marina had 57,000 t of fuel in its tanks, so yes: a prey of 22,000 t was more than a boost!

[jwsleser]

Conclusion: Schreiber has made us waste our time.

No. The conclusion is that you haven't provided any information to support the data is wrong.

Please note that I am not stating you are incorrect. What I am stating is that you have offer some speculation of why the number 3,572,00 might be wrong, but have yet to offer any data/source to demonstrate it is wrong. There is nothing inherently wrong with 60 year old data if the data is correct.

In reviewing the posts,

Jeff, I have all the volumes of the "Germany and the Second World War" series, except for the second tome of volume 5. May you provide me any further detail about the figure of 3,572,000 t of fuel, please? It is in complete contrast with every source I have read about this topic.

So what are the sources and what do they state? I have reviewed your posts in the Italian Strategic Resources and Industry thread and the data you have presented is very incomplete. Schreiber's number include fuels of all types for all uses, just not bunker fuel and aviation gas. It also includes fuel for civilian use. The numbers you have provided don't include vehicles fuels (gasoline and diesel), heating oil, etc.

You also have decided that the phrase 'Germany provided' to mean only Germany. I believe that is a very shortsighted assumption. Germany controlled the allocation of resources within its sphere of influence. To separate Romanian deliveries as different in terms of Schreiber's context (Italy imported X amount to support its war effort) while being pedantic doesn't make Schreiber incorrect.

Again, I am not stating you are wrong, but you haven't demonstrated that Schreiber is wrong.

[jwsleser]

At the end of 1942 the Regia Marina had 57,000 t of fuel in its tanks, so yes: a prey of 22,000 t was more than a boost!

No, using your own data, it was only a drop in the bucket.

Fuel burnt by one mission of the Naval Battle Forces (3 Littorio class battleships, the 3rd cruiser division and a dozen of destroyers) calculated in June 1943: 26,500 t.

Not enough for one sortie.

You did correctly point out that the bulk of the French Fleet (and the oil on board) was scuttled. While that fuel could be recovered, it would take a lot of time and effort. One also must recognize that these ship didn't have full bunkers; control of the French fleet by Germany included limiting the amount of fuel available to the ships.

In terms of the original question (Naval fuel from France), it appears that Italy didn't gain any useful amount.

[DrG]

jwsleser, the data about Italian imports of fuel are quite complete and provided by much more documented and recent sources than these. I am making reference to Raspin, Petri, Zamagni and ISTAT itself. I have demonstrated that the datum by Schreiber is misinterpreted, moreover if you have read what Schreiber wrote just a couple of lines under the sentence that you quoted, you would have seen that he counts the imports of 2,000,000 t from Romania separately! When he wrote "German deliveries" (not the more generic "provided"), he meant just what he wrote: fuel imported from Germany alone.

He is just making a mess, I don't understand why we should go on wasting our time with such an imprecise source when we have several others much more correct and written by scholars who did their homework and did not copy the guess by a journalists (a great journalist, I am a fan of Bandini and I have all his books, but he was the Gospel), who in turn grossly misinterpreted his source (which was just a yearly average, very rounded), turning total imports into imports from Germany alone and "fuel and lubricants" into fuel alone.

[DrG]

At the end of 1942 the Regia Marina had 57,000 t of fuel in its tanks, so yes: a prey of 22,000 t was more than a boost!

No, using your own data, it was only a drop in the bucket.

Using my own data, it was equal to 38.6% of the fuel oil in Regia Marina's stocks at the end of 1942. In that situation it was vital, also given that the battle fleet was not going to make any sortie and instead the convoy campaign was the sole task in those weeks. By the way, if my opinion is not enough for you, it's taken directly from Cernuschi and Tirondola's book "Comando centrale", who make my same point.

[jwsleser]

Dr. G

Thank you for the reply. And thank you for the correction on the sources.

I will look at it in detail tomorrow.

Grazie!

[jwsleser]

In that situation it was vital,

When you have nothing, anything was welcome. In terms of the RM being an effective force, 22K t was nothing.

A man can get scraps of food and still starve to death. The lack of fuel crippled the RM and a one time gain of 22k tons of fuel was meaningless. The fact that it represented 36% of the existing stocks of fuels only highlights the fuel crisis facing the RM. When a 2GM tanker could carry up to 15k tons of oil, you are looking at less than two tankers worth of oil.

[DrG]

Jeff, you are right: of course the mere fact that 22,000 t of fuel were vital make a good example of the crisis of the Regia Marina. For an Allied Navy (or the Regia Marina itself in 1940 and 1941) it would have been a trivial amount.

[Carl Schwamberger]

...
This does not Include the Fuel in the Ships they took possession of ?

My understanding the German Armistice Commission prevented the French ships from keeping their tanks full. Enough could be taken on for house keeping, for for a patrol or training sortie. The 22,000 tons figure is supposed to be what the Italians captured. I suspect there was a amount stored at Oran, Algiers, & any other ports in Algeria & Morocco.