The Octane Revolution: How Jimmy Doolittle Catalyzed a Wartime Industry

Editor’s note: This is the sixth article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.The impact of chance and poor logistics on warfare is especially acute when a battle or campaign is a close-run thing, as it was over