A Piece of PLUTO Pipeline
Theme : World War Two

PLUTO (PipeLine Under The Ocean) was the system devised to establish a sustainable fuel supply to the allied forces in Europe during 1944/5. The pipelines were laid from Dungeness to Boulogne and from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg. A converted coastal freighter, HMS Holdfast became the world's first cable-laying barge. The actual pipeline consisted of a flexible hollow cable which was wrapped around a huge drum (named HMS Conundrum). As the Holdfast towed the drum across the Channel, so the hollow cable unrolled and sank to the seabed. "Vulnerability testing for the Hais cable was provided free of charge by the enemy. A Hais line was undergoing flow testing at the Welsh seaport of Swansea, when an air raid landed bombs a hundred feet from it. A subsequent gale caused a ship to drag the line with her anchor. These confirmed the pipes' durability, recoverability and reparability." (www.eagle.org/offshoreEnews) Not only did the lines deliver 172,000,000 gallons by VE Day but they also became the start of the offshore oil industry.

This Item is located at The Museum Stores at Landore in the Stores