Synthetic Oil and Rubber
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During the war, there were many things that ran short and rations were put in place in order to keep the war machine running on both sides. Women were asked to give up their nylons, some countries required their citizens to ration food and oil was always restricted so that most of it could go toward the war effort. Oil was in such demand that the Germans needed to find an alternative in order to keep their planes in the air. To that end they created a blend of adipic acid ester and polyethylene oil which worked well enough to keep the Luftwaffe flying.
The Americans caught on and developed their own synthetic oil because it came with benefits such as reducing the soot deposits in oil radiators and making planes easier to start in the wintertime. While the Americans may not have had a significant shortage of oil, they and the other Allied powers did have a shortage of rubber. When Japan captured Singapore in December of 1941, they essentially took control of the world’s rubber production. They refused to allow any rubber to be exported to the Allies believing that it would cripple the war effort.
The Japanese were not wrong, it took hundreds of thousands of pounds of rubber to build planes, tanks, and battleships. In addition, every soldier used 32 pounds of rubber and with millions of soldiers on the battlefield, the Allies were desperate for rubber. The American government called for cooperation between rubber manufacturers, oil companies and university researchers to come up with a solution. In 1941 the U.S. rubber production was 500,000 pounds, by 1945 it was 140 million pounds, which met the needs of the Allied war effort. That rubber has now been used for the space program, commercial planes and even to create artificial hearts.