Noble Dark Lord, gracious Milady, My Lord and Ladies of the Forum, and Fenton,
My memory has always been a capricious thing. I remember the bore of a Brown Bess musket, but not my own collar size. I can declaim the destroyers of the Tribal class yet cannot assemble my grandchildren in order and I can remember the registration number of the Triumph Herald my dad had in the 60's but have to think about my postcode. Usually, I can remember most of the details of a story, and most importantly I can remember where I read/saw/heard it, but occasionally I am stuck with a story that I know, but cannot attribute it.
Well, gentle reader, I know that we (the Walnuts in the Pendraken Waldorf salad) are mainly prone to a similar affliction, so I wonder if you may help me. I am reading a biography of Tesla, the unique genius of electricity, some of whose wonders cannot to this day be repeated and my mind travelled to a story that I read, or mayhap dreamed I read when I was a stripling, and have hugged to my intellect these thirty years or more.
In the dark days of 1941, Britain was against the wall. Success had not yet come; the Soviet Union had been invaded and was reeling back towards Moscow. America lounged in comfortable neutrality and
Britain struggled for every tank, every plane every bullet and every pint of fuel.
The demerits of the British petrol can are well known, not for naught was it known as the "flimsy". It was slab sided and poorly constructed, probe to leakage and susceptible to even minor damage. British petrol was shipped in through u-boat infested seas and hoarded jealously.
How then was Britain to preserve its supply of fuel? Cometh the question, cometh the man. Professor S P A Getty (Simon Paul Anstruther?) was a giant of a man, larger than life in stature and achievements. He claimed to be of a cadet branch of the great Getty family, "with principles but without cash". At Cambridge University he studied chemistry, and captained the university teams in water polo and swimming. He was a member of the British team at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932 and took a great dislike to the Americans who he considered effete and pampered. He was a story teller whose tales skirted the line between fact and invention – he claimed to have won a race against Johnny Weismuller (who went on to play Tarzan) over six lengths and three strokes. Later this story included an offer to Getty to play Tarzan over Weismuller.
His great height (he claimed to be 6'5") and broad swimmer's shoulders and long beard gave him a memorable appearance, and he was always seen with an ugly pipe clenched in his teeth. He swapped effortlessly between RP English and a broad highland drawl.
By 1941 Getty was working in petrochemicals for Shell. He cogitated the problem of fuel supply and posited that solid fuel could be the answer. Should a can containing solid fuel be holed, the fuel would remain in place. Solid fuels were known; hexamine was used in cookers, and Getty possibly developed a form of napalm in his quest, but discarded it as being without use.
When the Sherman tank came into use, and it's distressing tendency to catch fire was exposed, Getty saw the possibility of solid fuel being used to reduce casualties. A solid fuel is less likely to explode.
By 1942, Getty had moved away from a solid block of fuel as impractical. It would be hard to get into fuel tanks of varying sizes and shapes, but he was working on fuel pellets using known corning, prilling or milling techniques. The problem was to find a suitable binding material that would allow the fuel to be clumped, but would not interfere with the characteristics of the released petrol.
Fuel pellets would not explode. They could be picked up if spilled and so saved; could be poured like liquid fuel, transported without specialist equipment for example in a lined box. The idea was that a main tank of pellets would feed a secondary, much smaller tank, in which the fuel pellets would be converted (usually by heating) back into a liquid. Thus particularly in land vehicles, engines would not need to be changed, and pellets could be used by simply changing the fuel tank. However, Getty never advocated the use of fuel pellets for aircraft, thinking that aerobatics would impede the supply.
Getty didn't manage to develop fuel pellets as a practical solution during the war. However, post war he continued his research as a private project. He demonstrated the effectiveness of his techniques on a static engine, and was ready to have a vehicle modified when he was killed in a fire. The hypothesis is that he dropped his pipe in some material he was working on, but whatever happened S P A Getty and his work went up in flames and were lost to the world.
That, at least, is the story as I remember it. Can anyone help me with a prill fuel question?
april fool
Ian S
Very good :D.
Testing, testing.....One ....two.....One...........er.....Two.
Anyone else having the same problem ? Does my bum look big in this avatar ? Of course not, it's Techno.
That still wasn't me. Have I been transferred to Techno's body? Did we post at the same time and get magically switched? Is it like Freaky Friday? Do I get to be Lindsay Lohan? Do I keep Techno's putty powers? Let me check outside. No, it's not raining, so I can't be in Wales. Cheers - FSN.
LOOK, it's sodding happened again !
Cheers - Confused of Wales
If it smells revolting, there is a large river close by, and Bridge which looks like a coat hanger the you are FSN, and in Runcorn, a truly 'orrible place.
If its raining, all the locals are about 5' 4", singing(to loud and too flat) and with dark hair you are in S. Wales, and Techno.
IanS ;) ;)
That pong comes from Widnes!
Quote from: fsn on 02 April 2014, 04:49:20 PM
That pong comes from Widnes!
Na - definitely Runcorn, worked in both.
IanS