Dedicated to Professor Siegfried Hiinig on the occasion of his 60th birthday 2-Ethoxybutadienes are, as enol ethers of a$-unsaturated carbonyl compounds, versatile and useful synthons. We describe here, a variable synthetic method for this class of compounds starting from primary alkyl halides, carboxylic acids and aldehydes.Alkylidenetriphenylphosphoranes ( I ) , whose ylide substructure is formed from a primary alkyl halide o r alcohol, can be transformed by treatment with the carboxylic acid derivatives (2) to acyl ylides (3)I'l. The ambidentateL2] phosphoranes (3) are O-alkylated[31, by treatment with ethyl bromide, to the phosphonium salts (4). from which a yproton can be abstracted by sodium amidel"]. The 2-cupies the apical position[81. In the 3'P-NMR spectra, particularly that of (9) (R2 =! = H), two broad signals appear at 6= + 10 to + 16 and -20 to -50 (H3P04 as external standard); these indicate an equilibrium between (9) and (12). In polar solvents such as CDCI,, this lies more on the side of (9), while in nonpolar solvents, such as benzene and toluene, (12) is more predominant. If solutions of (9)/(12) R' = H in toluene are treated with N-methylmaleimide (13), the substituted N-methylphthalimides ( I 7 ) [ ' I and triphenylphosphane oxide (15) can be isolated whose formation we account for by the following mechanism: (12). in a Diels-Alder reaction with (13), yields the bicycle (14). After Iigand rearrangement to (14'), the bridgehead C-atom bonded to the phosphorus occupies a n apical position in the trigona! bipyramid, permitting cleavage of the C-P bondfg1, which is cleaved in a cycloreversion to (IS). The dihydrophthalimide derivative (16) is formed, which is dehydrated in the work-up to (17). In principle, a cycloaddi6Et ethoxyallylidenetriphenylphosphoranes, which are described in the mesomeric limiting structures (5) and (5') are thus formed, and formally react as (5') with aldehydes (8) in a Wittig reaction to the 2-ethoxybutadienes (10) ( Table 1); as en01 ethers they are readily converted into a,b-unsaturated ketones by known methods. On the other hand, the ylides (5) react with acid chlorides (6) at the y-position to the P atom[51. Thus, apart from 1 mole of the phosphonium salt (C1' instead of Br'), the acylphosphoranes (9) are formed from (5) and (6) (2 : 1 molar ratio). lsocyanates ( 7 ) also attack the ally1 ylides (5) at the y-position to form, after proton rearrangement, the carbamoyl-substituted compounds (9)16]. Wittig reaction of (9) with (8) produces the 1-acyl-2-ethoxybutadienes (11) (Table l), from which, inter alia, y,&unsaturated 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds and derivatives of the 2,3-dihydro-4-pyrones can be obtained"'.(9). which is describable via mesomeric limiting structures, should exist in several different conformations. It therefore follows, in particular when R2 =/= H, that reaction of (8) with (9) should lead to formation of compound (11) having a mixture of Z. E-isomers at the I-position. In contrast, carbonyl olefination forms a new double bond having E-geometry whi...