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the above article continued

All of this planning and maneuvering—mostly unrealistic, but deadly serious—is charted in vast detail by Osborn. He also reveals, perhaps for the first time, the details of Operation Pike itself, the military plan for attacking the Russian oil industry. He shows the origins of the plan, economic estimates (including a willingness to lose Iranian and Iraqi fields to Soviet retaliation if the Caucasus fields could be successfully shut down), investigations of Soviet defenses in the area, the state of rail and water transportation networks, construction of airfields in Turkey (ostensibly for defense against Soviet invasion), and deployment of RAF aircraft to the Near East.

These developments were reaching a climax when a special reconnaissance aircraft departed from the UK on 23 March and reached Habbaniya in Iraq via Egypt a few days later. On 30 March, devoid of RAF markings and mounting a battery of special cameras, the aircraft left Habbaniya and flew unannounced into Iranian airspace at 20,000 feet, then over the Caspian Sea and onward to Baku where it spent over an hour photographing the city and its oil complexes. On 5 April the British spy plane flew from Habbaniya again, this time violating Turkish airspace to reach Batum. While the first mission had been uneventful, this time Soviet AA fire greeted the plane and a Soviet fighter attempted to intercept. Nevertheless, the British had obtained everything they needed for photo interpretation purposes and for mapping the Soviet petroleum centers. (Osborn illustrates his description of these audacious flights with photographs of the aircraft, the pilot and mission commander, sample shots taken on the flights, and maps created from the photographic survey.)

The verdict: the rickety system of wells, pumps, pipes, refineries, and tanks was extremely vulnerable to air attack.

As of April 1, preparations were being made to transfer 48 new Bristol Blenheim Mk IV bombers (four squadrons) to the Middle East Command to replace the older and slightly slower Mk I models. Although Slessor hoped to have aerodromes in Turkey and Iran at his disposal, all three of the major targets, Baku, Batum, and Grozny, were within range of Mk IV Blenheims if they were stationed in Syria or Iraq. The Blenheims could be supplemented by obsolete single-engine Wellesley bombers that could operate at night if their bomb loads were reduced. The French had offered an additional force of 65 Glenn Martin bombers and two dozen Farman 222 aircraft (the latter were rather slow despite the use of four engines and would be used for night operations as well). These aircraft were scheduled to be ready in Syria by May 15.

Even without the Wellesley's and French support, Slessor estimated, three squadrons of 18 Blenheims flying two sorties a week "could lay waste to all three refineries between 5 and 12 weeks." The same job could be accomplished in as little as one week or as much as three weeks if the 60 French Glenn Martins were combined with the British effort. Since refineries could not be left unattended for more than four hours at a time, owing to the need to regulate temperatures and adjust valve pressures, it would be desirable to sustain raids for up to four hours or make use of bombs with delayed fuses. Slessor was not much concerned by Soviet antiaircraft capabilities, deprecating the ability of the standard Soviet fighters, the Polikarpov I.15 and I.16 models, to do damage to the British bombers. "They are likely to be ineffective against Blenheim aircraft with a top speed of 280-290 miles per hour approaching from the sea."

And the French offered their own calculations about assaulting the refineries:

The French based their calculations on the assumption that the average refinery covered an area of 250,000 square meters and that bombers flying at the height of 5,000 meters (about 16,400 feet) at a speed of 250 kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour) could hit such targets with 15 percent of their bombs. If 50 bombs were required to destroy one refinery, and each aircraft carried ten 100-kilogram bombs (220 pounds each), then one group of 11 aircraft would be capable of destroying a single refinery after three sorties (15 percent of 330 bombs, to be precise, is 49.5 bombs). "The destruction of 120 refineries would," the French planners thought, "call for 360 group sorties. Assuming that 12 groups are available, each group would have to carry out 30 sorties. If each group carries out 3 sorties a week, the total time required would be 10 weeks."

The German invasion of Norway diverted Allied attention and resources while threatening to halt planning for Operation Pike. A meeting of the Supreme War Council on 23 April, however, approved continuation of preparations. New French airfields in northern Syria were to be ready by 15 May.

Of course, it was already too late. Germany invaded France, Belgium, and the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, and grandiose schemes in far-flung theaters collapsed almost as rapidly as the Allied armies under the onslaught of the panzers. German capture of Pike-related documents in French files and their subsequent publication caused considerable embarrassment to the British in 1941 and resulted in a Nazi death sentence in absentia on the photo interpreter who had signed some of the reconnaissance papers.

But this was not the end of Pike. When Operation Barbarossa was launched in June of 1941, the British, concerned that Russia would collapse as rapidly as France, and Hitler would then seize the Caucasus, revived Operation Pike as a contingency plan to be executed if necessary to prevent German occupation of the oilfields. The RAF prepared a new, seventy-page document titled "Outline Plan for the Denial of Russian Oil to German Controlled Europe by Air Action." Osborn provides a summary of the salient points.

In conclusion, Allied motivation for bombing the Caucasus was partly to deprive Hitler of oil, partly to support Finland, and partly to weaken or even cause the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even with the end of the Russo-Finnish War, Allied planning and preparations continued until the fall of France radically altered the geo-political balance of power.

In regard to depriving Hitler's Germany of oil, Osborn shows that British economic experts were fully aware that Soviet oil at that time made up only a small fraction of German supplies. Osborn also demonstrates that Anglo-French planners were hopelessly unrealistic about the amount of effort required to successfully carry out Operation Pike. Not only that, but forcing Stalin into an open war with the Allies would almost certainly have backfired on London and Paris. In the first place, the Allies were already far weaker militarily than they realized; it would soon be shown they were incapable of holding off Germany alone, let alone a combination of Germany and Russia. In the second place, Osborn offers an even grimmer alternative for the Allies.

An Allied bomber offensive against the USSR in 1940 likely would have driven Hitler and Stalin into a de facto, perhaps even a de jure military alliance against Britain. In this case British resources would have been strained to the limit, perhaps beyond the capability to cope with the combined Nazi-Soviet threat. One can only imagine what would have transpired had Hitler been able first to enlist Stalin on his side against the Allies, only to turn against him later with the knowledge that the Soviet Union would not receive aid from the West.

Finally, had the Allies miraculously managed to weaken the Soviet Union to the point of internal collapse with such a puny bomber offensive, what would have been the result?

In what seems a staggering oversight, the Allies also failed to analyze the complications of actually inducing the collapse of the Soviet regime, had this been the result of their attacks. Someone would have had to have filled the power vacuum if Stalin's government collapsed; that in all likelihood would have been Hitler, who could have hardly passed a golden opportunity to seize the natural resources of the western USSR and the Caucasus if he had the chance. Then it would have been Hitler, not Stalin, who controlled the oil deposits of the Caucasus, which was hardly the result the Allies desired or expected to achieve by attacking the Soviet Union.

As an aside, it's interesting to note that Osborn explains the derivation of "Pike" as the operational code name. It turns out that "one British intelligence officer was killed during the brief [British] military incursion into the Caucasus [in 1920]; his name was Colonel Pike."

Operation Pike is a thoughtful, provocative look at what could have become a decisive turning point in the war. Not only does the author offer fresh information about the exact nature of the military plans and how they evolved, he points out how the Soviet attitude toward the West during and after the war was shaped in good part by Stalin's knowledge of these plans. While some readers might emerge overwhelmed by the almost excruciating detail of diplomatic reports, news stories, rumors, propaganda, and intentional leaks that surrounded London's dealings with Moscow, Osborn provides the most thorough investigation ever undertaken of this shadowy aspect of the Second World War.