Air War Over Europe/another "what if"

[Pat Carry]

Seeing how in the later stages of WW2 the target of choice was oil refinery plants, what if in mid 1942 the P-51 Mustang was already on the scene and oil became the target of lets say 80% of bombing missions. How much sooner would the war have ended? Remember no machinery can run without it and unlike most of the other war industries, oil was very hard to disperse.

[fritzthefox]

I doubt it would have made much difference. Germany doomed it's oil supplies as soon as it declared war: over 60% of their oil was obtained from overseas suppliers. The lion's share of their domestic supplies was produced synthetically from coal. The synthetic fuel plants operated throughout the war, but only became invaluable to the German war effort in '43 (owing to the depletion of oil reserves by the Russian Campaign and the failure of the Germans to secure the oil fields in the Caucasus).

There is an interesting history of German wartime oil production here:
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1981/jul-aug/becker.htm

[Bug_racer]

Its a good question , but they probably would have gone for underground production sooner .