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I am interested in historic fuel prices;

How much did Avgas cost in 1940?

Someone
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user8572
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    What country and what area you are asking for? Fuel prices can vary greatly within a single city. You can look here to see prices for last 30 years in the US. – Farhan May 21 '15 at 15:36
  • Possible Duplicate: Where I can get historical jet fuels prices? – Farhan May 21 '15 at 15:36
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    @Farhan - I thought it might be a duplicate too after reading the title, but the question asks for a specific number, pertaining to AvGas rather than kerosene, in a specific year (and one that goes much farther back than what's available thru EIA, unfortunately). If anything, it might be off topic here and a better fit for SE.History. – habu May 21 '15 at 15:38
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    Was it even called Avgas in 1940? 100/130 is essentially an ultra-high-octane version of pre-1975 leaded gasoline, and as of 1940 it was only used in highly-supercharged military engines; most civvie aircraft of the day ran on more or less the same stuff that went into cars. – KeithS May 21 '15 at 19:33
  • Ultimately I am curious about the price in Guatemala but I figured that would be very difficult to obtain so I thought of making an estimate based on a price in, say, Texas. I have found on the internet that automotive gas was about 11 cents / gallon but I'm not sure if the higher octane version used for aircraft would be similar. Thoughts? – user8572 May 22 '15 at 15:19
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    This is what [history.se] would call a counter-factual question. AVGAS did not exist in 1940, which makes the question non-answerable. OP, please edit it. (You might ask "How must would AVGAS have cost..." or "How much was high octane...") – CGCampbell May 25 '15 at 12:27
  • During the war, fuels of all types were heavily controlled materials that could not be bought on the open market, so there was no direct prices that would be meaningful in modern terms. – Tyler Durden Jan 21 '17 at 23:07

1 Answers1

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100 octane fuel was the best possible aviation fuel at that time,introduced in April 1940 .By December 1942, production of 100 octane gasoline had risen to 5.5 million gallons/day; by June 1943, it was approaching 10 million gallons/day; and, by VE-Day, May 7,1945, production exceeded 20 million gallons/day. Avgas was introduced near 1970s. And, then it is very difficult to find exact price for that . But, the at that time the price of car fuel and aviation fuel were not very different. So, you can estimate it to be at 10-12 cents/gallon range. One other way to estimate the cost is by using the inflation adjusters, the current price for 100LL is about $5.5 . So, by using this calculator, it would have cost nearly 10 cents/gallon. (In 1940, Dollar and Pound were nearly same in value.) So, the final answer should be about 10 cents/gallon.

anshabhi
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