| Operation Pike | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of World War II | ||||||||
 Oil refinery in Baku. 1912. The French diplomat René Massigli, in a report to Paris, noted that US oil engineers observed "as a result of the manner in which the oil fields have been exploited, the earth is so saturated with oil that fire could spread immediately to the entire neighbouring region; it would be months before it could be extinguished and years before work could be resumed again".[1] | ||||||||
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| Belligerents | ||||||||
 Finland |
 Soviet Union Germany |
 Norway Sweden | ||||||
Operation Pike was a proposed Anglo-French strategic bombing plan to destroy oil-production facilities in the Caucasus in the early years of the Second World War. Air Commodore John Slessor oversaw planning directed against Soviet oil industry.[2] British military planning against the Soviet Union occurred during the first two years (1939–1941) of the Second World War, when, despite formal Soviet neutrality, the British and French, as initial Allies of World War II, concluded that the German–Soviet Trade Agreement of 19 August 1939 and the German–Soviet pact of 23 August 1939 made Stalin an accomplice of Hitler and of Nazi Germany.[3] The plan envisaged destroying the Soviet oil industry to cause the collapse of the Soviet economy and to deprive Germany of Soviet resources.
- ^ Osborn 2000, p. 108.
- ^ Osborn 2000, pp. 1–326.
- ^ Neilson 2001, pp. 197–208.