Allied troops wade ashore (Picture: Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo). USS Nevada (BB-36) opens fire on positions ashore during the landings on Utah beach (Picture: Niday Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo). Aerial view of the Allied sea invasion on D-Day (Picture: World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo). Landing craft, barrage balloons and Allied troops assault (Picture: US Maritime Commission). View of a Normandy beach during the D-Day invasion on 6 June 1944 (Picture: PA). Commandos land ashore on D-Day (Picture: PA). Troops wade ashore from a landing craft onto a Normandy beach (Picture: PA). US Army troops disembark from a landing craft on a Normandy beach (Picture: PA). American assault troops get ready to land on Omaha beach (Picture: Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo). American soldiers in a landing barge sail across the Channel ahead of landing in Normandy (Picture: TopFotoP/PA). Operation PLUTO is a wholly British achievement and a feat of amphibious engineering skill of which we may well be proud.” A “Conundrum” loaded with pipe and ready to be carried out to sea.Assault landing crafts carrying Royal Marines form up in the Channel on the night of 5 June 1944, ahead of taking part in the D-Day assault the next morning (Picture: PA). “It is now possible to reveal the existence of an oil pipeline system under the sea stretching across the Channel to the Continent.Ī large part of the Allied Expeditionary Force has been supplied with petrol by this unique method, which provides for petroleum the same kind of facilities upon a hostile shore that the Mulberry harbours provided for general military stores. Winston Churchill, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, once paid tribute to the feat of British engineering: Operation PLUTO guaranteed uninterrupted delivery of bulk petroleum (which usually needs a special harbour and dock and extensive storage facilities) across the beaches, making it invulnerable from air, surface, or submarine attack, and completely independent of the weather. From there the gasoline is carried via high pressure lines to the Rhine. One million gallons daily still reach Frances through the 20 undersea pipelines, 16 running from Dungeness to Boulogne, four from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg. 12, 1944, to May 8, 1945, about 120,000,000 gallons of gasoline reached the Anglo-American armies via the pipeline system laid under the English Channel by British engineers in co-operation with the British Navy. On May 30, 1945, the Kingston Whig-Standard reported on the secret operation, calling it “one of the most closely guarded secrets of the invasion of Europe.”įrom Aug. (Photo by Imperial War Museums via Getty Images) (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images) An alternate view of one of the “Conundrum” spools for Operation PLUTO’s oil pipeline in 1944. A man standing next to one of the spools, then called a “Conundrum,” for Operation PLUTO’s oil pipeline in 1944. Rather, the Allied invasion allowed for the operation to later be successful. In other words, the pipeline wasn’t used for D-Day. The progress made in the weeks following D-Day allowed the operation to be completed by August 1944. The pipes carried gasoline to help the Allied war effort.