To realize these plans, major organizations with experienced geologists and drillers, as well as equipment for exploratory work, were relocated from the old oil regions to the Bashkir and Tatar ASSR, and to Samara, Orenburg, and Perm Provinces. From just the Krasnodar and Grozny regions, 17,486 persons traveled east and into Central Asia; of these, 1,351 were engineers and technicians.
Highly qualified production organizers were appointed to head the new oil enterprises: E. Tagiyev was appointed director of Permneftekombinat, S. Kuvykin was appointed director of Bashneftekombinat, A. Vasilyev was appointed head of Kuybyshevneft, and Ts. Astvatsaturov was appointed head of Saratovneft.
On September 22, 1942, the State Committee for Defense adopted the important Resolution 2326, “On Expediting in Every Way Increased Production of Aviation Gasoline, Automobile Gasoline, Toluene, Oil, and Lubricants at the Refineries of the Center, East, and Central Asia,” which planned urgent measures to substantially increase the production of fuels and lubricants.
The Fuel Component of Lend-Lease
Contemporary historical literature and domestic Russian press publications on the role played by crude oil and petroleum products in supporting military actions during World War II speak mostly in general terms. Numerous memoirs recount in detail the tank breakthroughs, sea battles, air raids, and heroic deeds at the fronts. However, most of these fail to mention the fact that, without fuel, the crews of tanks, airplanes, and naval vessels could not have carried out their assigned combat missions. For the rear echelon, the need for fuels and lubricants was one of the most acute problems.
The oil factor had a substantial effect on the nature and progress of World War II. To a certain degree, the limited availability of fuel and energy resources, including oil, predetermined the strategy and tactics of Nazi Germany in the theaters of war. The German high command bet on a blitzkrieg strategy for operational use of large mechanized formations and the application of massive air power to support its infantry. In turn, this meant the preliminary stockpiling of adequate reserves of armaments, fuels, and lubricants during a preparatory period, followed by a sudden attack on the enemy. This explains the existence of definite intervals between Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland, the seizure of much of France, and the attack on the Soviet Union. However, having occupied much of Europe, and in attempting to force the populations of occupied countries to work for the German military economy, Nazi leaders encountered the need to provide mineral raw materials and fuel, which was very difficult to do given their total international isolation. Anticipating a fuel shortage, Nazi leaders set an objective of mass synthetic motor fuel production. However, this could not solve all the fuel problems of the Third Reich, because while Germany proper produced 1.4 million tons of oil in 1940, imports amounted to 2.5 million tons, including 1.7 million tons from Romania.
It is thus quite logical that the 20th century war of motors was largely won by the anti-Hitler coalition of powers thanks to their ample supply of both munitions and hydrocarbon fuels. American and British armed forces together expended several times more fuel during the Second World War than Nazi Germany and its satellites.
It can confidently be said that the availability of fuel to the Red Army and Navy during the Great Patriotic War was a major factor in the Soviet people’s victory in their struggle with their Nazi German occupiers. Colonel General Vasily Nikitin, head of the USSR Armed Forces Fuel Service, estimated that the Soviet Armed Forces used 18 million tons of various fuels in strategic, frontal, and army operations during World War II.
Despite the heroic labor of the Soviet oil workers, the extreme conditions of the war caused a drop in the country’s oil production from 34 million tons in 1940 to 21.3 million tons in 1945, i.e., a 37.7% reduction, and correspondingly exacerbated the already difficult situation in the refining sector, which found itself incapable of fully meeting growing Air Force demands for high-octane aviation gasoline. For instance, the USSR produced 1.4 million tons of aviation fuel in 1941, but only 1 million tons in 1942. The collection The Economy of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 [Narodnoye khozyaystvo SSSR v Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyne 1941–1945 gg.] presents data on the production of aviation gasoline, which amounted to 6.1 million tons during the war. At the same time, Red Army planes consumed 4.9 million tons of aviation gasoline during the war years, and naval aviation units consumed over 5.5 million tons.
It should be stressed that, from 1941 to 1945, the USSR still had fairly large consumers of aviation gasoline. These included the aviation industry, which produced 137,000 planes during the war and additionally had its own fleet of planes. Civil aviation and airborne units of the Main Administration of the Northern Sea Route [Glavsevmorputi] likewise consumed considerable volumes of aviation fuel. Even the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs [NKVD] had its own airborne squadrons. According to the most approximate calculations, the aforementioned organizations, taken together, consumed considerably more aviation gasoline during the four war years than the 615,000 tons indirectly allocated to them by Soviet statistics.
Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that the USSR received significant volumes of aviation fuel from third-party countries from 1941 to 1945, which made up the fuel shortage.
A study by the Russian historian Alexander Matveychuk, Candidate of History, entitled “The Oil Component of Lend-Lease,” published in the collection Soviet Union’s Oil [Neft strany Sovetov], is the first thorough examination of the place and role of petroleum products deliveries to the USSR under the Lend-Lease program during World War II.
Subsequent study of this issue has confirmed the special importance of aviation gasoline deliveries from the USSR’s allies in the anti-Hitler coalition under the Lend-Lease program. According to official data, the US delivered a total of 2,159,336 tons of petroleum products to the USSR under Lend-Lease and commercial contracts, and the volume of high-octane aviation gasoline was 1,320,113 tons, including 615,561 tons with an octane rating above 99.
An important feature of aviation gasoline deliveries under Lend-Lease was that the US delivered aviation gasoline with an octane rating of 99 or higher to the USSR at a time when the technical level of the domestic refining industry permitted only the production of low-octane aviation gasoline. Thus, in the prewar year of 1940, the vast majority of the 973,800 tons of aviation gasoline produced was fuel with octane ratings of 70 to 74, used by antiquated domestic airplanes. Understandably, this situation did not change during the war, and the pressing demand for B-78 aviation gasoline required by the new Yak-1, II-2, MiG-3, La-5, and other warplanes could not be met by Russian refineries. And so, American high-octane gasoline was used in large quantities as an octane-boosting additive to make quality aviation fuel both under factory conditions and directly at Red Army and Navy combat units. According to available data, 53% of the total volume of high-octane gasoline was made at military storage facilities from April 1943 to May 1945.
Equally important for the supply of quality fuel to Soviet aviators were Allied deliveries of special octane-boosting additives (e.g., tetraethyl lead solutions) for the preparation of high-octane aviation gasoline for the Soviet Armed Forces and for boosting automotive gasoline octane ratings. In all, 919,798 tons of these additives were received, including 807,217 tons from the US and 112,581 tons from the British refinery at Abadan, Iran.