OIL UNDER SEA

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25211, 25 May 1945, Page 7

OIL UNDER SEA

ARMIES ON CONTINENT CROSS-CHANNEL PIPELINE (Reed. KM p.m.) LONDON, May 23 One of the outstanding achievements of British engineering during the war in revealed in a congratulatory message which Mr Churchill has sent to the engineers concerned on "operation Pluto." This was the transfer of petrol from England to the Continent by submarine pipeline. British engineers develo[X»d a metal pipeline that oould be wound oil ft drum and unrolled into the sea, with the result that a few weeks nfter I) Day all fuel required by Field-Marshal Mont ("joinery's forces was being pumped from Britain to where it wa« required on the Continent. Operation Pluto wm wholly a British achievement. It recently became known tfeat p*trol was btving piped across Britain from ports 011 the went coast. The pipeline under the Knglish Channel meant that this oil could lie sent direct from thea<ports to the British forces on the Continent. More than 1,000,000 gallons a day were delivered over a period of some months—sufficient to meet the entire requirements of Field-Marshal Montgomery's armies. The y;erni of the idta was planted in 1940 when Mr A. C. Hartley, chief engineer of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. suggested a pipeline that could be laid like a cable.