Soot is a problem, but creosote will burn if the temperature is hot enough--and you need to burn it, lest chimney fires result.
Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2
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This matter has been discussed in other WWII threads earlier. In the 20s and 30s, Finland used a lot of domestic firewood even on ordinary days, over 20 million cubic meters per year - that comes to almost 6 cubic meters per person per year. During WWII, the number rose to over 25 million cubic meters. At the same time, the Finnish use of fossil fuels in 1940 was about 70% of prewar numbers, and in 1945 under 30%. Wood was not only used for heating - it was used in steam locomotives as well, in steam ships in lake and coastal traffic, and in producer gas vehicles on the road. During WWII IOTL, especially in 41-45, the Finnish civilian motor traffic practically ran on wood, with rare liquid fuel being reserved for military use.
So, all in all, the WWII-era Finns (like their neighbours the Swedes) were quite well prepared for any issues that using a lot of domestic wood as fuel might cause.
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Depends on how many the US builds and how cheap/simple to operate they are. If the US builds a fuckton of them (instead of some or as a complement to the DE's) I could see a lot of them ending up as the workhorses of the navies of various newly decolonized countries. Just the thing to chase off foreign fishermen, show the flag in disputed waters, , maybe occasionally shell a few coastal or riverine guerrilas, and chase down smugglers. Destroyer Escorts/Sloops ended up filling those roles for many nations for decades. For a poorer country with a newly established navy a few small simple vessels that don't require large crews, large amounts of technically trained servicemen, and are fairly cheap to operate would be the perfect beginners fleet for poor countries trying to form a navy for the first time. And the fact that the US would be giving them away for free or nearly free to allies or neutrals that the US is trying to woo would sweeten the pot. What's their draft like? Can they be used in shallower coastal waters or on larger navigable rivers?
Hell if the history of the post war Phillipines is anything like OTL I could see the Phillipino's still operating a few into the 21st century.
I'm kind of surprised the Finns didn't make more usage of Wood sourced Methanol for their internal combustion vehicles.
From the top of my head, I'd say that creating a producer gas based system was easier, especially in terms of the logistics for the fuel (which would be locally available pretty much everywhere). Methanol would have created additional work (setting up production, transporting wood to factories, and then distributing the fuel across the country). Producer gas gear for vehicles was also simple enough to produce in even pretty rudimentary workshops across the country.
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The Philippine Navy operated a WW2 Destroyer Escort until 2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRP_Rajah_Humabon_(PS-11)
They still have a WW2 Minesweeper in active service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRP_Quezon_(PS-70)
One of the many reasons I love this site is that there are discussions about the wood-burning policies and methods of 1940s Finland.
Of course even accounting for this I imagine at least a dozen will stay with the US via the Coast Guard in addition to the Treasury class
Driftless
Donor
I'd bet some of re-purposed Altoona/Hickory's might have post-war modifications to armament and the addition of helicopter decks
did the Altoona/Hickory class have the towing bit that the original Treasuries had? the Treasuries were some of the best value per dollar ever purchased by the US Government...
There is plenty of film and photographic evidence from the period of both Sweden and Finland lining the streets with firewood cut to standard lengths ready to be fed into the boilers of apartment blocks.
The Swedes certainly used a lot of gas generators on trains, buses and cars.
A lot of Finnish railway locomotives were equipped to burn wood right to the end of steam...
Also both countries were good at producing charcoal and using that for industrial purposes, the Uddaholm company for example had a number of large stores for charcoal used in steel production
The Swedes certainly used a lot of gas generators on trains, buses and cars.
A lot of Finnish railway locomotives were equipped to burn wood right to the end of steam...
Also both countries were good at producing charcoal and using that for industrial purposes, the Uddaholm company for example had a number of large stores for charcoal used in steel production
Peat? There's no coal in Finland, but I know the country's used the former.
Story 2271
Leningrad, Soviet Union, October 16, 1943
Tatianna's wrists were sore. Her forearms were on fire. Her hair was limp and lanky with sweat. The extra few inches it had grown since she had been wounded barely touched the bottom o f her neck. She took in another deep breath. Her good leg was planted firmly on the tread board of the staircase in the back of one of the permanent military hospitals in Leningrad. The main staircases were for doctors and nurses but no one bothered her here. She allowed the oxygen to flow into her lungs for one more moment, grimaced, and slowly lifted her damaged knee. Her foot left the ground, relief and then a new type of pain as the ligaments and tendons of her ankle were too lax and she felt things stretch as the movement reached its apex. She placed her foot down again. Everything hurt as the muscles that had been damaged by that shell fragment screamed in pain as they contracted and allowed her to go up one more step. This was the tenth flight of stairs that she had done this morning. it would be her last. It had only taken her most of an hour. The first time she attempted to go up and down the back stairs after she was released from the surgical ward, one flight took her two hours.
An hour later, she was sitting in a chair in the library. Her cane was next to her and in front of her was a cup of lukewarm tea. Her new friend, a wounded machine gunner from a Guards regiment laughed as she curled her lips. The pawn positions were becoming intolerable. White had an advantage that either the King side bishop or the Queen's rook would soon exploit. A sacrifice might buy her some time, as her knight advanced. As the piece touched the board, a new pain, no, a pain that she had forgotten long about hit her. Her hand went to her stomach as her womb began to cramp for the first time in two years. Enough food not being burned during long stalks for a firing position had allowed her body to remember that she was still a woman.
Tatianna's wrists were sore. Her forearms were on fire. Her hair was limp and lanky with sweat. The extra few inches it had grown since she had been wounded barely touched the bottom o f her neck. She took in another deep breath. Her good leg was planted firmly on the tread board of the staircase in the back of one of the permanent military hospitals in Leningrad. The main staircases were for doctors and nurses but no one bothered her here. She allowed the oxygen to flow into her lungs for one more moment, grimaced, and slowly lifted her damaged knee. Her foot left the ground, relief and then a new type of pain as the ligaments and tendons of her ankle were too lax and she felt things stretch as the movement reached its apex. She placed her foot down again. Everything hurt as the muscles that had been damaged by that shell fragment screamed in pain as they contracted and allowed her to go up one more step. This was the tenth flight of stairs that she had done this morning. it would be her last. It had only taken her most of an hour. The first time she attempted to go up and down the back stairs after she was released from the surgical ward, one flight took her two hours.
An hour later, she was sitting in a chair in the library. Her cane was next to her and in front of her was a cup of lukewarm tea. Her new friend, a wounded machine gunner from a Guards regiment laughed as she curled her lips. The pawn positions were becoming intolerable. White had an advantage that either the King side bishop or the Queen's rook would soon exploit. A sacrifice might buy her some time, as her knight advanced. As the piece touched the board, a new pain, no, a pain that she had forgotten long about hit her. Her hand went to her stomach as her womb began to cramp for the first time in two years. Enough food not being burned during long stalks for a firing position had allowed her body to remember that she was still a woman.
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This is as probably as happy an ending that Tatiana was likely to receive.
There was peat production for fuel use in Finland before WWII, but it was rather small scale. They did jumpstart a government-run effort to raise production during the war IOTL, but did not get very far in the project by 1945 because only limited resources could be thrown at it in wartime. The real growth in peat production in Finland has been seen since the 1970s, when the oil crisis gave a new motivation for promoting this domestic fuel.
So, while today Finland is a superpower in peat production, so to speak, by WWII it was only a niche fuel source in comparison to wood.
Story 2272
Northeast of Pearl Harbor, October 17, 1943
USS Lexington turned into the wind. Her great screws churned and soon there was over fifty knots of wind over the deck. Even as Aeolus exerted himself, an intricate ballet was taking place on the wooden deck. Deck crews worked in sequence to get the heavily laden Avengers up in the air first. Each of those planes carried four five hundred pounders to support the Marines that would soon be coming to shore. Before the brand new Curtiss dive bombers were to be launched, another four Hellcats took off to reinforce the Combat Air Patrol. The dive bombers were next, each lugging a single heavy bomb along the belly and a much lighter bomb under each wing. The temperamental bombers were each lugging just under a ton of iron. The three strike squadrons started to leg their way to the target, confident that the sixteen Hellcats would both catch up and then climb over them for top cover.
A second, similar strike was also assembling from Bon Homme Richard while Cowpens maintained local defensive duties.
Twenty miles to the south, another task group was beginning to recover the fighter sweep of over 100 Hellcats that had pantsed the Army Air Corps fighter squadrons defending the beach.
USS Lexington turned into the wind. Her great screws churned and soon there was over fifty knots of wind over the deck. Even as Aeolus exerted himself, an intricate ballet was taking place on the wooden deck. Deck crews worked in sequence to get the heavily laden Avengers up in the air first. Each of those planes carried four five hundred pounders to support the Marines that would soon be coming to shore. Before the brand new Curtiss dive bombers were to be launched, another four Hellcats took off to reinforce the Combat Air Patrol. The dive bombers were next, each lugging a single heavy bomb along the belly and a much lighter bomb under each wing. The temperamental bombers were each lugging just under a ton of iron. The three strike squadrons started to leg their way to the target, confident that the sixteen Hellcats would both catch up and then climb over them for top cover.
A second, similar strike was also assembling from Bon Homme Richard while Cowpens maintained local defensive duties.
Twenty miles to the south, another task group was beginning to recover the fighter sweep of over 100 Hellcats that had pantsed the Army Air Corps fighter squadrons defending the beach.
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poorly written, updated now... a single 2000 pounder and a pair of 500 pounders, 1 each per wing.
Then they will instantly crash .... unless they have even more fixes than the 880 required even in OTL before the USN reluctantly accepted 'The Beast' :-(
The Helldiver first saw combat with bombing squadron VB-17 from the carrier Bunker Hill during an attack on Rabaul on November 11, 1943, nearly three years after the first flight of the prototype.
The Curtiss dive bomber’s debut with the fleet was less than promising. Although the Helldiver had originally been intended to exceed the performance parameters of the Dauntless by a wide margin, VF-17’s commander, Lt. Cmdr. James E. Vose of VB-17, declared that–aside from folding wings, a feature the Dauntless never possessed–‘the SB2C offered little improvement on the SBD…the SBD would be my choice.’
It was not difficult to see his point. The SB2C-1 could carry a single 1,000-pound or 1,600-pound bomb in its internal bomb bay, plus two 100-pound bombs externally under the wings. It had a top speed of 281 mph and an initial climb rate of 1,750 feet per minute. The Helldiver’s maximum range was 1,100 miles, and its combat radius was 276 miles. By comparison, the SBD-5, which carried the same bombload, had a top speed of 253 mph and could climb at 1,620 feet per minute. The Dauntless’ maximum range was 1,100 miles, and its combat radius was 285 miles.
The Helldiver was a killer in both simple power and handling
A vivid memory among early-model Helldiver crewmen was that while other aircraft types would lift off the deck and climb away, the overweight, underpowered SB2Cs would often reach the end of the deck and simply drop out of sight. Most of them would reappear a few seconds later, struggling for altitude, but inevitably a few did not make it.
Lieutenant H. Paul Brehm, who flew SB2Cs with Air Group 87 aboard the carrier Ticonderoga, described an all-too-typical scene at the beginning of his unit’s airstrike against the Japanese battleship Hyuga on July 24, 1945: ‘Lieutenant Al Matteson was the first off. His plane got to the bow, but his wing loading was unbalanced. He started going into a tight right turn. Matteson’s plane hit the water hard, and the Helldiver just disintegrated. I saw only one person getting out of the crash debris. All I thought was, ‘Hell, we’ve lost our first plane for today’s strike, and we haven’t even completed the launch.’
even the desperate FAA would not take it. Tests by the British A&AEE pinpointed "appalling handling". Moreover
Captain Eric Brown, the test pilot who evaluated the Helldiver for the Royal Navy, flew nearly every type of dive bomber, including a captured Ju-87 Stuka. After piloting the SBD-5 Dauntless, the Vultee Vengeance and the Helldiver, Brown rated the Curtiss product a distant third. ‘One could only sympathize with the U.S. Navy pilots flying this unpleasant aircraft from carriers in the Pacific,’ he later wrote.
Even the later models-4 in 1944/5 with more powerful engines and better propellors which might have attempted this load
were not worth the extra trouble in maintenance over an SBD or (later) any fighter with rockets/napalm
(Quotes sourced https://www.historynet.com/curtiss-sb2c-helldiver-the-last-dive-bomber.htm)
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