Essential training used fuel even when the Royal Navy's allowance would then be insufficient for its remaining operations. The resulting demand for more fuel brought the service back into negotiation with the Treasury. Drawing from the strategic reserve would itself require replacement purchases, while estimates of wartime fuel consumption kept rising during the 1920s and 1930s. Planning assumed a two-year war, yet operations continued for six years without exhausting the reserve. The accumulated provision exceeded what the Treasury had understood from the original estimates.
Notable Point · 2:36:52-2:38:48
How the Royal Navy built its wartime fuel reserve
Rising interwar estimates and the cost of training enlarged the naval fuel reserve beyond the original planning assumptions.