AFSCME 3357-HOF'S BLOG

A Batch of Bad Gas Plagues Britain - For the Second Time
So what does this have to do with the P-38 and Green Acres?

Engines are stopping all over southern England, as a batch of bad gasoline is causing havoc with hundreds of car engines. The mysterious thing is that not all cars are affected, mostly those 2-5 years old, and the contaminant has not been identified.

I thought I'd pitch in one of my obscure historical antecedents. During World War II, the American bombing campaign by the 8th Air Force operating out of England suffered for lack of long range bomber escorts. In theory, the P-38 Lightning would have been ideal for the role, because it had inherent long-range and excellent high altitude performance. At least it did in the United States.

When the Lightning made it to England, the planes seemed to suffer from an unusual number of engine failures. Some attributed the problem to the extreme cold temperatures at high altitude over Europe, but the P-38 operated in the Alaska and Iceland with no problems. Even to this day, the problem is debated among plane wonks, but most sources indicate that the problem was that the tetra ethyl lead compounds used to boost the octane in the gasoline used in England were incompatible with the P-38's turbocharger system. The lead separated from the gas; and the gas lost its anti-knock properties. Uncontrolled detonation in the engines resulted in engine failure. The turbocharged P-47s and the supercharged P-51s used the same gas with no problems. By the time the problems were really isolated, General Doolittle, the commander of the 8th Air Force, had pretty much given up on the P-38. Almost all the Lightning units in the 8th converted to the P-51 Mustang.

So what does this have to do with cars, popular culture, or the law, the main topics of this blog? First, the Allison engines of the P-38 were produced by General Motors. That's the car part. Now here's the popular culture part: Eddie Albert's character in the television show Green Acres, was a P-38 pilot in World War II. The name of his character, Oliver Wendall Douglas, a lawyer, was a salute to two Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendall Holmes and William O.. Douglas. That's the law part.

(Okay, for the real Green Acres and plane wonks, Mr. Douglas was a photo-recon pilot, so his Lightning was probably technically an F-4 or F-5. In one episode, he flies a Mustang, which would have been an F-6.)

Eddie Albert, by the way, was a supremely cool dude. He was a WWII vet. He won a Bronze Star on Tarawa. He was a proto-environmentalist, serving as spokesman for the National Arbor Day Foundation. He lived to be 99 years old, dying in 2005.