United Kingdom: France 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.

[4] Anti-communist attitudes in both countries had also increased in the first few months of World War II due to the provision by the Soviet Union of economic assistance to the Germans and their aggressive actions in Eastern Europe.

The plan included the seizure of northern Norway and Sweden and an advance into Finland to confront Soviet troops and naval forces in the Baltic Sea.

[9] The Latvian Soviet historian Vilnis Sīpols [ru] noted that the British and French military staff had developed strategic plans for assaulting the USSR from the south but that neither government had a political decision to invade.

[10] During March 1940, after the end of the Winter War, the British performed secret reconnaissance flights to photograph areas inside the USSR by using high-altitude, high-speed stereoscopic photography pioneered by Sidney Cotton.

[11] Using specially modified and unmarked Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior aircraft painted a special blue camouflage scheme developed by Cotton, who commanded the RAF Photographic Development Unit (PDU), the Secret Intelligence Service launched high-altitude reconnaissance flights from RAF Habbaniya, a Royal Air Force station in Iraq.

[citation needed] Analysis of the photography by the PDU revealed that the oil infrastructure in Baku and Batumi were particularly vulnerable to air attack, as both could be approached from the sea and so the more difficult target of Grozny would be bombed first to exploit the element of surprise.

On 4 July, the Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro (German News Bureau) released excerpts of the captured documents relating to Operation Pike and asserted that Germany must be credited with saving these other states [including the Soviet Union] from being drawn into this chaos by Allied schemings... because she took timely counter-measures and also crushed France quickly.The strategic bombing campaign against Soviet targets was postponed and eventually abandoned.

Operation Pike was motivated largely by the desire for action and avoiding massive, direct confrontation during the Phoney War, the overconfidence of strategic bombing enthusiasts and the idea of harming both Germany and the USSR simultaneously.