Britain From Above. http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/ Without Britain From Above I could not have built most of the Targets I have done so far. Great website.
I have been meaning to make this Purfleet Oil Target better for many years now. Time to do it.
Oil "Refinery" is a bad description for this place in 1940. Purfleet Oil Storage Depot would be better. Or Purfleet Oil Depot, for short.
Read this from a website describing it's history:
"The Anglo-American Oil Co., part of Standard Oil of America, built storage tanks east of Thames Board Mills at Purfleet, in 1888.
Kerosene, and later petrol, was unloaded at a new wharf.
In 1951 Anglo-American became the Esso Petroleum Co.
Named Esso, because the old monolithic, monopoly on trade for oil was Standard Oil (SO). Which in 1978 became part of Exxon Corporation.
In 1979 the installation was producing most types of petroleum products."
There is a place with "oil" tanks east of the Anglo-American Oil Co. and the Purfleet Saw Mills. But those tanks stored vegetable oils, making margarine.
Read this from history website:
"Edible oils for margarine were first imported into Purfleet in 1917 by Van den Berghs & Jurgens, later part of Unilever.
The factory, lying west of the Purfleet-Dartford Tunnel and south of London Road, was flooded in 1953.
It was extended in 1957 and in 1971, and in 1959 was employing 1,000 workers, making 'Stork' margarine, processed cheese, and soft drinks."
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I do not see any infrastructure at the Anglo-American Oil Depot pictures from 1921 to 1949, that is necessary for refining "black" oils like Asphalt and Low Sulfur Fuel Oil,
"light" oils like naptha, diesel, MOGAS (motor car gasoline), and AVGAS (aviation gasoline),
let alone "ultra-lights"like propane, which need spheroid storage tanks.
In 1940, it is my opinion that this was an Oil Storage Depot. Or Terminal. Only for storage for petroleum products, imported from elsewhere.
Here is old Purfleet, which Paul made for v2.10. Some of the oil tanks are placed somewhat OK, but the big warehouses are not good for representing an oil/petroleum products storage depot.
Oddly, when I was searching for photos of Portsmouth Naval Base, I found this German Purfleet photo. No date given, but from looking at many many 1921-1924 photos
from the Britain From Above website of Purfleet, I think this is before 1920.
It does show what the 4 different type manufacturing companies were here. As mentioned above, the Jurgens O"lwerk was making margarine with vegetable oils, not petroleum oil.
The Anglo-American Oil Co. occupied the land behind the Caspian Wharf.
This is the only picture, from the Britain From Above website, of the Oil Depot near 1940. The next good photo is from 1949, which I discounted as being too late.
This is 1929. It is a bit fuzzy, but after looking at many other Britain From Above photos from the 1920s, I am familiar with what I am looking at.
I made lines here to show where the different Companies may have had their properties separated. Roads and streets usually being demarcation lines.
A 1921 photo. This was taken closer that the 1929 one. More clarity:
A 1924 photo. Good clarity:
Note the badly smoking stack (they all did back in the "good old days") spewing out grey/black smoke containing improperly burned fuel & all kinds of nasty molecules into the air.
The building next to it is, I think, a Boiler House probably containing 2 small fuel oil fired boilers to make STEAM.
You need at least 2 boilers, because 1 of them will fail... sooner or later... and you always need a BACKUP!!
to "steam trace" ala.. heat trace, all of the pipes and Fuel Oil tanks so that that the thick, sticky, and often waxy, fuel oil does NOT get colder than 150 degrees Fahrenheit,
or else all the pipes will PLUG UP! Then nothing will flow thru said pipes, and the product cannot be delivered.
Likewise all "black oil" tanks have a grid of piping on the bottom of the tanks to heat up the oil, by said "steam" or heat tracing pipes to keep the tanks HOT!
If a black oil tank goes to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, then the oil "sets up hard" and it will not flow out!
Anyway.. all black oil Storage Tanks need constantly to be heated to 150 degrees F. Or hell will freeze over!
Even an Oil Storage Depot needs at least 2 each boilers to provide the heat needed to prevent a Liquid from becoming a Solid.
The 2 tanks directly behind the "Pumpwerk" were:
1. A water tank to feed the boiler tubes.
2. A fuel oil tank the feed the boiler burners to FIRE UP the water and make steam.
German 1940 photo. This one has been around for years. Looks like some more tanks were there than in 1929. Not very clear, even tho i blew the given photo up a lot.
1958 during the flood. Probably destroyed most of the electrical infrastructure and most of their motors! SHUTDOWN!
Probably did more wide spread damage than the German bombs in the 1940s!?
Here are all of the objects in the new I_PURFLE .bin file. Not all are target elements. There are 42 target elements.
All of the oil tanks, big and small, are target elements, except the one with a green dot. The tank with a red dot is "Target Central".
Also the yellow dots on the Factory Section objects denote target elements.
This is with all ObjectAdds objects in game. I tried to reproduce the Thames Board Mills with ObjectAdds, given the industrial terrain next to the Oil Depot.
All the terrain around here could be better for a Target area, but it's not bad, and I don't wish any terrain improvement here.
I just wanted to make the Purfleet Oil "Refinery" refined somewhat to better reflect history.
The Purfleet Saw Mills and the Jurgens Margarine Oil Works are not reproduced, due to the improper residential suburban terrain provided at those places.
