© 2006 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).
Printed from https://danginteresting.com/curio/englands-armed-iceberg-of-war/
During World War II the Allies actively recruited the inception and development of new and unique weapons. They knew that innovation and creativity would be the juggernauts of the war. Ideas from making bats carry incendiary devices to the A-bomb were pursued, but perhaps none were as hugely ambitious as the aircraft carrier Habbakuk.
When Britain was taking a pounding from German U-boats they were desperate to build a ship that would not fall victim to Nazi torpedoes. The Habbakuk was destined to be a 2,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and 2 million ton aircraft carrier with a hull 40 feet thick—made of ice that could take a few Nazi torpedoes. It was formidable enough to be dubbed a floating island.
Ice is relativity easy to come up with, thus should make for easy repairs when needed. Ice should be pretty durable, being the stuff that sank the Titanic, and like that famous predecessor, Habbakuk was purposed to be virtually unsinkable. The ship might have been, but the plans were not.
Originally the Habbakuk was the brainchild of Geoffrey Pyke, a boffin renowned for his difficult-to-realize ideas. That notwithstanding, in 1943 he managed to sell Churchill on the plan of building a super-sized aircraft carrier for the Atlantic that could take on the U-boats. Its armaments would have included 40 dual-barreled 4.5″ DP (dual-purpose) turrets and numerous light anti-aircraft guns, and it would have housed an airstrip and up to 150 twin-engined bombers or fighters.
With steel being at such a shortage, ice was deemed to be the building material of choice because it was easy to acquire, buoyant, and sturdy enough to take a few hits. Problematically, it turned out when ice was frozen into the blocks that were meant to construct the hull, it wasn’t as strong as a glacier. In fact, a blow from a hammer would break the block. There was little hope that the hull could take a torpedo. The plan seemed doomed until a short time later that year when New York Polytechnic redesigned ice to be more durable by adding 14% cellulose—in the form of sawdust, wood chips, and paper shreds—to the ice. The new ice blend was christened Pykrete for the creator of the plan, and it retained the affable cost and buoyancy while adding the desired strength. There was finally a practical means to make the ship.
A smaller scale version of the ice ship was built and tested in Patrica Lake of Alberta, Canada. It lacked the incredible bulk of the Habbakuk, being a mere 30 by 60 feet, and kept refrigerated with a one-horsepower engine. But it floated, and it proved to be able to last through the hot summer months without melting.
However, the Habbakuk itself was never begun. The plans were mothballed once it became apparent that aside from the enormous expense of the project, the amount of wood pulp needed for the pykerete would impact paper production, the amount of steel tubing it would require would deplete reserves for conventional warships, and it required an absurd quantity of cork for insulation. Moreover, the ship’s top speed of six knots made it impractical. It didn’t live up to the biblical book for which it was named (with an accidental spelling flourish added by a clerk): “…be utterly amazed, for I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” ( Habakkuk 1:5, NIV)
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This is one example where it’s good to have your funds frozen during wartime.
Seriously, though, had this been built, I’m sure it would have sent shivers down the spines of the Axis powers.
Okay okay, I apologize for the puns. That was awfully cold of me.
what I heard about pykrete (not sure if its true or not) was that bombs and bullets bounce off it. can anyone tell me if this is true or not
I watched a show about this on the history channel (I think) recently. Pykrete is incredibly strong stuff. Plus, since it’s bouyant, the hulls of a ship could be made as thick they wanted without worrying about weight.
Think about it like a big, solid block of granite (let’s say 6’x6’x6′). If you shoot it, the most a bullet would do is chip it and ricochet off. If you blow something up next to it, most of the energy from the explosion would be directed away and around it, rather than through it. About the only way to destroy a ship made of the stuff would be to blow it up from the inside out.
jbigdog said: “About the only way to destroy a ship made of the stuff would be to blow it up from the inside out.”
Or, you know, a hairdryer.
Pykrete was pretty tough stuff. But not more durable than concrete. However, as the hull would have been quite thick, more like a traditional solid – chances are the overall durability would be superiour to other vessels of the time.
Also, pykrete had low thermal conductivity due to the wood pulp and can therefore withstand moderate temperatures quite well.
J. Tithonus Pednaud
Purveyor of Peculiar Physical Phenomena
and Puzzling Prodigies of the Past
http://www.thehumanmarvels.com
Halo Boils and Goils, I shall not attempt to gather all historical facts, in a timely fashion; but if you wanted to gather all the old data up – fine go for it.
I saw a program of recent vintage, that included some historical fillum, of attempts to clear the Atlantic passage??? of ice bergs, some time around WW2 and some time later, in the 1970’s to 1990’s???
And I am not sure about all the hisorical connections or all the facts, as to exactly how the fellow was inspired to create a ship out of ice…
But my feeling is that this may be the case.
Solid GAS FREE ice, is “breakable as glass”, but real ice bergs are not actually made of ice, they are made of compressed SNOW, and snow is a FLAKE, and when it falls, it makes a sponge of trapped air and ice crystals.
As the snow deepens, the snow crystals compress and the gas does too… until you more or less ende up with a solid block of compressed gas AND ice.
It’s the REAL icebergs, that are essentially resistant to large explosive bombs and things like torpeodoes.
I have seen the fillum footage, of the Yanquies, dropping bombs from aircraft, onto ice bergs, and while the bombs were big enough to sink ships and U boats etc., the ice berg simply digested it, as the ice and gas mix soaked up the explosive force.
So while I can’t speak up as to how the fellow was inspired to think about creating a ship from ice, but has it of been made from the same “compressed air and ice mix” as the icebergs, then it would have been essentially unsinkable by way of torpeodoes.
http://www.uscg.mil/lantarea/iip/FAQ/ReconnOp_5.shtml
http://www.uscg.mil/lantarea/iip/Photo_Gallery/Iceberg_Destruction_Experiments_1.shtml
In the “Naval Ops” games by Koei, they used the Habbakuk as one of the late game bosses. It had similar properties, It could absorb huge amounts of punishmen, had a huge fleet of aircraft, and sported a large number of cannons and other armaments. Not to mention it looked pretty amazing, it was about 10x the size of the biggest ship you could build, and looked like an airbase sitting on top of an iceberg. Oh, and it was so slow that a battleship could go circles around it.
That’s just COLD! The fact that you would prescribe the use of an electrical device in confined proximity to melted water….Well, I am shocked. And the other posters use of puns, that kind of witticisism is just the tip o’ the iceburg. Pizza
itd kinda be like the death star
u could only blow it up from the inside
And yet another article from the past that I somehow missed.
Thanks for the story! I had never heard of this before.
By the way, the author mentioned bats with incendiary devices. On 02.11.20, Ripley’s Believe It or Not had a short article entitled “Bat Bombs.” Here’s the link: https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/bat-bombs/