I just checked with my mother, who lived through this period in Texas, and she recalls that this is bullshit. If you were suspected of “hoarding” things could get dicey, but nobody went around confiscating “excess” tires.
That’s a good place to get reliable information, y’bet. :rolleyes: Personally, I use the local barber shop for my source of news and history.
Ah. Of course.
The only caveat to that might have been aviation gasoline, which US production was sorely strained to provide enough refinery capacity for supporting the Allies as well as our own needs, that was probably in short supply.
Yes, there was plenty of gas, but tires were the thing. People don’t understand - tires in those days were not the 50,000+ forget-about-em affair like they are today. Flat tires were common and expected, and they didn’t last more than 10 or 15 thousand miles at best. Apples and aircraft carriers.
There was a healthy black market in tires, according to the barber shop guys.
And I think that many, if not most, US refineries of the day were fractional distilleries. In order to make enough of the aviation fuel which used the lighter molecules, huge amounts of regular gasoline resulted. The excess was run off into ponds and burned. I took advanced flight training at Ft. Sumner, NM and we did a lot of night cross country flights over toward the Texas panhandle. You could the see gasoline fires for miles.
Just a guess, but was there a problem with distribution? Most of the US domestic production and refining would be in the south - around the Caribean and the Gulf ports - most of the use would be in the industrial areas of the North East. A lot of the transportation would have been by sea and in 1942 the U-boats made a hell of a mess of the east coast sea lanes.
Find: [ latex ]
Not found
:dubious:
Wasn’t most of it in Asia then?
Wait, I just sort of noticed this. Did they really distribute condoms to the troops? I always thought that was a movie invention. Who did they think the troops in the trenches would be getting it on with? I’ve always been under the impression that the majority of fighting that Americans did, especially on the European front, was ‘huddled in a muddy trench three dozen miles from Paris’ fighting, not ‘urban warfare go to the brothel when you’ve won’ fighting. 
“Fraternizing” with local girls has been part of army life since Sargon the Great.
regarding tire rationing: most tire production was reserved for the army. Synthetic rubber production was not sufficient to supply the armie’s needs and the civilian population. My gradfather told me of nights he would drive home from his business-praying that his 4 bald tires wouldn’t burst! He finally got approval to get some retreaded tires (which were also on allocation). yes, there was PLENTY of gasoline-but no tires.
Question: is natural rubber STILL better than synthetics , for tires? There is still quite a bit of natural rubber production, today.
Correct. Most of our rubber came from areas that had just been taken over by the Japanese.
Condoms were also very useful in keeping water out of the barrel of your rifle during landings and river crossings.
Sargon hell. Diddling the honeys dates back to the campaigns of Thag the Compulsively Stabby.
Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that when I ride alone, I am not, in fact, riding with Hitler. :eek:
(So I presume that “car-sharing clubs” had the same purpose–conserving tires?)
Not everyone was at the front. There were huge air bases and supply warehouses for example that supported thousands of troops who in turn supported the local economy.
Anti venereal prophylactic kits were available on request and taking them was strongly recommended. They contained a comdom, special soap and ointment. There was a regular routine of training films on how to use them and why. Once a month or so the order came to “fall out in raincoats and overshoes.” That meant nothing but raincoats and overshoes for penis inspection looking for VD. The army took VD prevention veeerrrrrrryyyyy seriously and the rate in WWII was astonishingly low as compared to previous wars.
As was mentioned above, the ratio of combat to support troops was about five or six to one and even the combat troots got time in the rear areas on occasion. In fact, Air Force personnel were always in the rear area.
There was a constant diet of training films about VD. There was one real clever one withRobert Benchley, Marjorie Main, and Ava Gardner.
Benchley, as a sailor, steps into a bar. Down at the end of the bar sits Marjorie Main, scraggley hair, a couple of hairy warts on her face, missing several teeth and in a hideous dress. Benchley has a few beers then looks down the bar again. Main’s warts and missing teeth have disappeared. A few more beers and Main’s hair is fixed and she is in a smart looking outfit. After a few more beers Benchley looks again and there sits Ava Gardner and they leave together. The last scene is Benchley at sick call.
:eek:
I have a hard time believing this. Just burning gasoline like it was a waste product? Couldn’t they hook a gasoline engine up to a generator and use it for something? That wouldn’t waste tires, at least.
A lot of the fires in the Texas panhandle were sludge pits burning. They have burned them in my lifetime, but not any more.
When an oil well was drilled, they would run crude into a pit until the well was completed. After completion, the salt water produced would still have an oil scum on it. This salt water used to be left to evaporate and the oil scum would build up over time. Both of these oil sludges would be burned off, we used to be able to see them quite often, columns of black smoke on the horizon.
They might have used gasoline to get the sludge burning, but I’ve never heard of burning straight gasoline.
There were numerous small refineries around here back then, about a dozen locally that I can think of that have been closed and dismantled. Not the Conoco/Phillips in Borger and Valero in Sunray are the 2 major ones surviving, but there are still a few of the minor refineries around. Many are just gas compressor stations now, no longer full refineries.