Warbird Information Exchange

During the Vietnam War, what grade of fuel was used in piston-engined A-26s and A-1s? I'm assuming 100-130, but did they have 115-145?

Lots and lots of purple gas. There were lots of big piston aircraft involved in the effort.

C-124, C-121, C-123, C-97, C-119, C-46, C-54, C-47, BEAVER, OTTER, CARRIBOU, HU-16, T-28.

The USAF stopped stocking 145 in about 1977. The last big recip aircraft in the inventory was the KC-97 at TexANG 136th ARW at Hensley NAS Dallas, TX. As I recall we were operating reduced power on 100 octane at the very end (1978).

I am asked what military gas was available from 1966 to early 70's all of the time because of the stencil on our T-41B. Apparently these were the two grades available. The 210 HP engine in the T-41B is high compression, and runs OK on the 100 LL we have now. However some engines in Vietnam including radials were low compression engines (Cessna O-1 with O-470). I don't know how they fared on the high octane stuff loaded with lead.

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Excess octane won't really hurt anything. Continental (and Lycoming FTM) chased lead content around with changes in valve guide materials. The odd thing being that most of the engines were designed around 87 (no GA engine is high enough compression to actually NEED 100), changed the guides to deal with 100 and 115/145, then had issues with the switch to 100LL that can sometimes be cured (unofficially) by using the old part number guides.

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

Lets not forget the A26K Model operated out of NKP

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The real JR