【History of Kaichuan Pipelines】The “Pluto” project: the secret oil pipeline that ensured victory in Normandy
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I came across some information online and would like to share it with fellow sailors here as an important record of the history of pipelines. ------------------------------------------------------------------ After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States officially entered World War II and continued to fulfill its commitments by providing Britain with large amounts of military supplies and fuel for its war of defense against Nazi Germany. At that time, the United States’ main oil fields were located in the Midwest, while the refineries that processed crude oil and supplied finished fuels to Britain were situated in the East. At that time, the main method of transporting crude oil produced in the western United States to the east was by sea tankers. The proportion of oil transported by sea accounts for 64% of the total volume of crude oil shipped eastward in the United States. In response to this situation, Germany deployed a large number of U-boats to intercept large American oil tankers along the oil shipping routes off the East Coast of the United States, in the Caribbean Sea, and in the Gulf of Mexico, in order to cut off Britain’s external oil supply and thus force Britain to surrender. In just the two-month period from January 1, 1942, to February 28 of the same year, German U-boats attacked 74 American oil tankers in those waters; with one American tanker managing to escape, the remaining 73 were either sunk or severely damaged ； 25% of the total number of large oil tankers in the United States sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, German U-boats suffered no losses at all. At that time, it was impossible to transport fuel from Britain to ports near Normandy in France using oil tankers. The German Nazi Air Force specifically searched for oil tankers belonging to the Allied forces of the United States and Britain in the English Channel in order to attack them ； The primary strategic goal of the German military was to cut off the fuel supply lines for the landing forces of the American and British allies. To address the fuel shortage of the forces landing in Normandy, the Allied command of the United States and Britain put forward the initial idea of secretly laying fuel pipelines on the bottom of the English Channel. Immediately thereafter, Arthur Hartley, the chief engineer of the British-Iranian Joint Petroleum Company, proposed the first plan, which involved using lead pipes as the oil transport tubes ； British petroleum engineer John Huggins proposed a more improved second option, namely a scheme using steel pipes as oil pipelines. For confidentiality reasons, the entire undersea fuel pipeline project was named the “Pluto” project. Actually, it’s the little dog named “Pluto” from Disney animations. The names of the first and second approaches are also named after their proposers, namely the Hamel approach and the Hais approach. At this point, the oil workers crossed the English Channel and landed in Normandy with the troops, beginning the secret mission of laying underwater fuel pipelines.
The Normandy pipeline project drew on the more advanced submarine cable laying technology available in Britain at that time. The method involves installing huge drums on modified civilian ships, wrapped with lead or steel pipes with a diameter of 3 inches and a length of 4000 feet. These hoses are made by welders welding together 20-foot long individual tubes. The drums after being fitted with tubes weigh about 1,600 tons each. The civilian ship sailed from the British port of Isle of Wight to the French port of Cherbourg, covering a distance of 70 miles. As the civilian vessel moves, the drum rotates slowly, releasing the coiled lead or steel pipe from the drum and causing it to sink to the bottom of the English Channel. Lead pipes have good bendability, but they are very heavy and their cost is excessively high. Therefore, lead pipes are used when leaving and approaching the port, while steel pipes are used in the middle of the strait. Because although steel pipes have poor bendability, they are lightweight and relatively inexpensive. In other words, the Hamel scheme is used at the start and end of the pipeline, while the Hais scheme is used in the middle of the strait. On August 14, 1944, oil workers from the United States and Britain completed the construction of the world’s first undersea fuel pipeline. The US and British allied forces quickly requested the installation of another fuel pipeline. The starting point is Port Dunbar, the \"anchor harbor\" for Britain’s fleet of laying ships, and the ending point is the French port of Boulogne, 31 miles away. Throughout the entire campaign, oil workers laid 17 submarine pipelines across the English Channel, with a maximum daily fuel delivery capacity of 3,000 tons. In total, they supplied approximately 600,000 tons of fuel to the Allied forces of the United States and Britain, thereby providing the fuel needed to secure the final victory in World War II. With submarine fuel pipelines in place, it is also necessary to build a shore terminal in Normandy. Because it was not only used to store the materials needed for laying underwater fuel pipelines, but also to load and unload military supplies and equipment destined for Normandy. The beaches in Normandy are relatively flat, with a tidal range of 1,800 feet. On coasts with strong tides around the world, how can offshore Normandy-style piers that can be used independently be built in a short period of time?
At this time, the oil industry professionals proposed a new approach. In 1869, American oil drilling engineer Thomas Fitz Roland proposed a plan for \"offshore oil drilling platforms and equipment,\" for which he was granted a U.S. **patent for a technical invention**. This is a four-legged offshore oil drilling platform. Inspired by the patents of American oil drilling engineers, the oil industry professionals who participated in the D-Day invasion designed a new type of cargo handling platform for docks. The improvement method involves installing a large buoy at the center of the oil platform, allowing the four support legs of the platform to extend up and down. When the sea water recedes, the platform can use its 4 legs to slide downward in order to \"raise itself\", or in other words, stand on its own” ； When the sea level rises, the platform retracts its 4 legs, allowing it to float on buoys, or in other words, to rest on the surface of the sea. In June 1944, the Allied forces of the United States and Britain established a highly secret construction base for artificial docks on French beaches, used to load and unload tons of cargo – namely new types of \"self-elevating\" platforms that stood on the shore. The platform’s code name is Muiberrys (mulberry). The platform is converted from a barge that is 200 feet long and 60 feet wide, with each barge equipped with 4 telescopic leg pillars that are 60 feet tall. Each barge has a floating channel that extends to the beach.
On the early morning of June 6, 1944, a total of 760,000 troops from the Allied forces crossed the English Channel from Britain and landed on the beaches of Normandy, seizing control of five nearby beaches. Thereafter, a massive Allied force of 2.88 million troops across 36 divisions surged into France like a tide, advancing with unstoppable momentum and successfully establishing the second front on the European continent during World War II. As the American and British Allied forces advanced deep into German territory across the Channel, they maintained a high pace of progress in order to prevent the Nazi German forces from getting a chance to recover. The 36 divisions in the U.S.-British Allied forces were all mechanized divisions, equipped with a total of 13,700 aircraft, 5,800 warships, 11,000 tanks, and 160,000 military vehicles. These massive amounts of mechanized equipment consume 3,000 tons of fuel per day. At this time, the fuel pipelines laid on the seabed off Normandy played an important role on the battlefield and made a significant contribution. The strategic landscape of World War II underwent fundamental changes, laying an important foundation for the peoples of all countries to completely defeat German Nazis. After the war, oil transmission pipelines, as surplus materials from the war, were put up for public auction by the United States on January 30, 1947. East Texas Electric Power Company purchased these two pipelines and operated them for over 40 years, playing a significant role in economic development during peacetime. These “self-elevating” artificial pier platforms were publicly auctioned by the US and British allied forces. The American company Comarch purchased one of these platforms and converted it into an offshore oil drilling platform. Komech also successfully carried out offshore drilling operations in 1947 in 20 feet of shallow water in the Gulf of Mexico in the United States. Such a platform is the now-famous offshore oil \"jackup\" drilling platform. At present, there are nearly 20 such platforms in our country, which play an important role in shallow-sea drilling for offshore oil exploration.
As the largest amphibious landing operation in human history, from the D-Day invasion to the Allies establishing a firm foothold on land, as much as 5.8 million tons of fuel were consumed. In the early stages of the attack, the fuel was mainly stored in 20-liter fuel tanks and 200-liter fuel drums. For ease of transportation, fuel containers used in practice are mostly 20-liter tanks, and the fuel stored in these tanks was the only source of fuel available when the Allies first set foot on the shore. According to incomplete estimates, the Allies prepared as many as 11 million fuel drums for the landing. Together with the 200-liter fuel tanks, which were difficult to transport but essential, the Allies ordered a total of up to 20 million fuel containers—a whole factory was moved from the United States to London to produce fuel tanks around the clock under the supervision of the Supply Department. But this is far from enough; even with as many as 11 million fuel tanks, the actual amount of fuel that reached the beaches with the landing forces in the first wave was only 14,000 tons. Adding to this the losses incurred during transportation and combat, such supplies are definitely not sufficient. By this time, for the landing operations, Britain had accumulated as much as 250,000 tons of fuel; the key was to get it to the European continent.
Even with the support of the prefabricated floating pier, which is considered an engineering marvel, it is difficult to unload flammable and explosive liquid fuels and lubricants at such a pier. Moreover, given the severe weather during the first few days of the landing operation, as well as the attacks by the German Air Force that were planned but fortunately did not actually occur, it was clearly impractical to have oil tankers with thin hulls and large cargo volumes approach the floating pier for unloading. Portsmouth, with its well-equipped facilities and favorable conditions, was under German control; no one could predict when the Allies would be able to seize these ports. It was almost certain that the Germans would destroy all useful equipment in the ports upon withdrawing, and it would take time for those facilities to be restored.
The Allies needed a way to get fuel to the landing forces on their own, before they could regain control of the ports; after all, those ports might not be captured in time, but the fuel had to be delivered on schedule. There are three viable options: The first is decentralized transportation, involving the use of small, shallow-draft oil tankers with a displacement of 500–600 to transport fuel. The second option is to establish a ship-to-shore fuel pipeline system (TOMBOLA), which allows large oil tankers to deliver oil to the shore even when they are far from the coast and without access to port facilities. The third option is the most ambitious, but possibly also the safest: laying a temporary undersea pipeline across the English Channel, using specialized laying ships to quickly construct an undersea fuel pipeline from pumping stations along the British coast to the landing area.