Document Rp2yaDjgVe4DjMeeLdDY14rmE

Et hyl Gasol ine Corporat ion 25 BROADWAY CoiNrTrEeHs.pooPnFdiecnKce / J Dr. E. A, Kehoe, College of Medicine , Ohio*.M e n & Bethesda Avenues, Cincinnati, N e w Y o r k * January 51, 1929. ' . ' . , ; -j i.... Dear Dr, Kehoe: Referring to our letter of January 29th regarding the Vacuum Oil Company furnishing the Royal Australian Air Force with supplies of Ethyl Gasoline, we have now developed some more details on this subject, which are submitted as follows. The total contract is only for 150,000 gallons of gasoline per year. Tie immediately suggested that they buy this quantity of Ethyl Gasoline of given specifica tions here in the United States and ship it down to Australia, rather than attempt to mix it in that country but they only have one p x g s l g e from their ships to their tank storage and they think putting colored E T H Y L f e i n g h this line would color water white gasoline and also kerosene stocks that would follow it. For this and other rea sons, they insist that it is only practicable to mix the ETHYL fluid in Australia. Their shipments to the Royal Australian Air Force will probably be in lots of 2,000 or 3,000 gallons at a time and occasionally a maximum of a 10,000 gallon lot. . They will want to mix in the cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Smithville, Perth and one other point. We today told them that we would not permit mixing of these quantities of ETHYL fluid except through the eductor system. This, of course, would involve five eductors with the attendant facilities that accompany the use of same. These eductors would probably only be used once or twice a year and, of course, this would make the whole procedure very expensive. : They/^therefore, propose that we ship them a drum of ETHYL fluid to each of these five points and then use some metering device to mix it with, the gasoline. We have told them that we have gone through such situations in the past and that we have found it practicably impossible to use anything except a vacuum system without leakage and the resulting health hazards being involved. They'still think that they can rig up some kind of a -small :mixing and, metering device. Also, we now find that they would want to fill the cartridges which the planes bf the Air Force want to-carry with them by hand out of drums of ETHYL fluid. They'State that they have good chemists available at all of the five points whom they believe are entirely capable of handling it. . i. . '' ' '' ' ' . - ' This is rather a difficult situation to meet because we certainly want to assist the Royal Australian Air Force in obtaining supplies of Ethyl Gasoline, particu larly because of their connection with the British Air Ministry, and then again, the . Vacuum people have been working on this for a year or more and are very enthusiastic about the prestige that they believe will be gained by the Air Force using our product. The Vacuum is one of the big commercial distributors in Australia and I think their general ideas are to contemplate approaching us at some later date to consider a contract for general distribution, and we probably would not look with disfavor upon such a ' w: ,;'. Kfi' 0015572 f 'V .oa. >.asfF r. E. A. Kshae,/ -2- 1/51/29. contract. On the other hand, we know what it means to handle possibly four or five 50-gallon drums of ETHYL fluid in small lots in a foreign, country without equipment that we know eliminates health hazards. \j The Vacuum people say that if they cannot make the arrangements as pro posed above, undoubtedly, the contract will go to the Shell Company, who will furnish a gasoline of very high inherent anti-knock value with a close cut distillation range. This, of course, might limit the Air Force to a lower..compression ratio than they might otherwise wish to use if ETHYL was available. .. Vie would thank you to please give this your serious consideration and if you feel there is any plan that can be suggested to in any way meet the views of the Vacuum Oil Company and still not run any risk whatsoever from the health standpoint, we would like to do everything we can for them. They will use approximately 5 c.c. of lead per Imperial gallon which would mean that one 50-gallon drum of ETHYL fluid would be required to treat 55,000 gallons, or between four and five drums for the total requirements of the Air Force for a year. Thanking you for your usual good attention to this matter, we are P.S. Frankly, what worries me (in addition to the risk involved in this particular instance) is the possibility of establishing a precedent. We could not hope to keep this procedure secret and as other European and foreign countries developed, other oil companies would want the same exceptions granted and before we know it we might have a potentially large amount of ETHYL fluid being handled by hand, which certainly is not a good picture to contemplate.