Why was Oil important in WW1?

Question

The British Navy needed oil i don't know why... I have sincerely searched everywhere, please help me.

it is for a project and writing down "Oil is needed to fuel the ships" (what i originally had) didn't seem like enough lol

Answer 1

Which oil are we talking about? Crude oil? Lubrication oil? Vegetable oil?

Answer 2

uhh to make their boats work?
right now, approx 50% of the US goverment use for oil goes into the air force and about 35% goes into the navy. the airforce probably wasnt that big in the 1910's, making the Navy the number 1 use for oil. oil is a lubricant too remember. they need oil for every moving part of their boat including weapons.

Answer 3

Although many ships ran on coal at that time the newer, larger, warships were oil-burners.

In addition, a lot of trucks were used to haul supplies, and other machinery was involved in war production - and ordinary production, such as tractors for agriculture.

Answer 4

You are correct in believing that the main military demand for Oil in WW1 was to fuel warships. Beginning about 10 years before the start of WW1, both the British and German navies (at that time the two largest fleets in the world) had decided to switch from coal-burning to oil-burning ships; other navies then followed their example.

Although Coal was mined in most countries, apart from the United States, none of the “great powers” had (or at least knew that they had) plentiful Oil supplies in their homelands. So the decision to switch from Coal to Oil as warship fuel wasn’t an easy one from a strategic point of view.

But from a technical point-of-view, Oil had great advantages over Coal. Oil burned at hotter and cleaner than Coal, and allowed ships to achieve higher speeds. Oil aboard ships could be stored in more compact tanks than the enormous bunker-holds required for Coal-fired ships, and could be pumped via pipes to the furnaces instead of having to be hauled there by hand. Because Oil used less space for storage than Coal, ships could cruise for longer before returning to a base for refueling. Refueling with Oil was also much quicker (and cleaner) than refueling with Coal. And the number of sailors required in the engine room to keep an oil-fired ship moving was much less than the gangs of stokers and coal-haulers needed aboard a coal-fired ship: so a higher proportion of crews could be used to fight, instead of propelling the ship.

But Oil was not needed only for surface ships in WW1. WW1 saw the dawn of mechanized warfare in many other ways. The air forces that were developed by all nations demanded Oil as the basis for fueling and lubricating the engines of their aircraft. The battle tanks developed by the British (and then by other combatants) depended on petroleum (gasoline) for their power. As time went by, in most theaters of operation motor trucks replaced mules and horses as the main means to move supplies and reinforcements quickly up to the fighting line. Large artillery pieces had to be hauled by motorized vehicles (they were too heavy for horses to pull). And (back to the oceans) submarines absolutely had to be diesel-oil-powered (with electrical battery backup), in order to keep moving while submerged.