Beneath the 100-foot-deep waters of Lake Patricia in Canada
lies a revolutionary secret that was once poised to change the tides of World War 2.
As essential materials for warfare manufacturing became scarce and limited, the Allies were forced
to get creative and began looking for ways to produce new contraptions using natural materials.
A genius inventor who some even labeled as mad
eventually received the support of a military royal and Prime Minister Winston Churchill
himself to build the unimaginable: an aircraft carrier made out of giant manmade icebergs.
Prepare To Be Amazed
As it peaked in mid-1940 and through the end of 1943,
the Battle of the Atlantic was the most extended military campaign in World War 2.
All over the North Atlantic, British fleets suffered heavy damage against the lethal
German U-boats and Luftwaffe aircraft, which intercepted and sank them at an alarming rate.
By the time Italy's Regia Marina introduced their own submarines into the mix,
the Allies were already running out of resources needed to build naval equipment.
Bomber and fighter aircraft proved efficient means to protect the vessels. However,
they could not be deployed into the oceans without aircraft carriers, and these massive
ships required significant amounts of steel to be manufactured, a material already in scarcity.
In 1942, Geoffrey Pyke, an eccentric scientist, inventor, and journalist, had an idea to protect
Allied ships from the Nazi submarines’ lethal weapons. He believed that a giant floating
ice ship would be a great natural-sourced option in the face of material limitations.
The inventor's proposed solution was to build a carrier out of water, the most plentiful material
on Earth. His suggestion included cutting off a large piece of ice from the Arctic,
towing it into the ocean, and hollowing out the center.
The inventor, working at one of the branches of the British War Office, then contacted the
newly appointed Chief of Combined Operations, Lord Louis Mountbatten. The royal family member
had already heard of Pyke through another one of his previous outrageous yet creative ideas.
After selling him on his latest scheme, Mountbatten brought the inventor -along with his
designs- to Winston Churchill. Visibly impressed, the Prime Minister gave the project his blessing.
Habakkuk
The project was codenamed Project Habakkuk to reference the biblical book of the same name.
Regarded by many of his colleagues in the Combined Operations office as a genius or even a lunatic,
Pyke was given leave to pursue his latest outrageous idea.
The inventor then drew the plans for a giant aircraft carrier
featuring an extended landing platform along the top with a central void running her length below;
this empty space would serve as a shelter for the planes.
The proposed ice aircraft carrier was designed to be the largest machine ever built:
2,000 feet long and 200 feet wide, twice as big as the Titanic.
With a weight of two million tons, enough space for 300 aircraft, and a top speed of 8 miles per
hour, Churchill would now have the most impressive secret weapon against the lethal German U-boats.
Her torpedo-proof hull made of ice would be 40 feet thick,
equipped with 40 dual-barrel turret guns and numerous light anti-aircraft guns.
And to ensure the carrier didn't melt during operations, Pyke proposed a massive cooling system
made out of a complex network of pipes that would constantly pump chilled refrigerant on the ice.
Pykrete
There were several problems with the ice during initial tests, as its brittle composition deformed
under pressure. According to Pyke, a ship as large as Habakkuk would likely sag under its own weight.
By a mere stroke of luck, two researchers from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn had just
made a significant breakthrough, discovering that wood pulp or sawdust mixed with water
froze into a material tougher than concrete and fourteen times stronger than regular ice.
The researchers' experiments also showed that this innovative material was resistant to chipping,
compression, and even bullets.
The frozen watery pulp would be machined like wood and cast into specific shapes, like metal.
When immersed in water, the material formed an insulating armor on its surface
that protected its interiors from melting.
The wondrous discovery was christened Pykrete in honor of Geoffrey Pyke.
The inventor then called molecular biologist, glacial expert,
and eventual Nobel Prize-winning protein chemist Max Perutz to join the project.
Together, the duo perfected the functionality of Pykrete, determining that the ideal breakdown
for structural soundness was 14 percent sawdust or wood pulp and 86 percent ice.
Both men championed the prospective benefits of a full-scale carrier that could use seawater
to repair damages while also discovering some of Pykrete's inevitable challenges.
Expansion during the freezing period made construction more difficult than
Pyke initially anticipated, as the ice and sawdust mixture would start bowing under
its own weight at temperatures above five degrees Fahrenheit.
However, Pyke was satisfied enough to present the Pykrete mixture to Lord Mountbatten,
who was impressed and took a sample directly to Churchill.
It is said that once at Churchill's home in late 1942,
Mountbatten found the Prime Minister taking a bath and dropped the block of Pykrete into the water.
Both men then stared at the slowly-melting wood pulp.
During the secretive Quebec Conference in August of 1943, an enthusiastic Lord
Mountbatten attempted to demonstrate Pykrete's efficiency in front of several witnesses,
including top military officials from America, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
During the display, Lord Mountbatten presented two blocks, one made of ice and the other of Pykrete.
Then, without a single warning, the royal and military official pulled out his pistol
and shot the block of ice, which shattered into pieces.
He then turned his gun to the Pykrete and fired at it.
This time, the bullet ricocheted off the frozen block and grazed the trouser leg
of US Navy Admiral Ernest King, ending up in the wall behind the stunned witnesses.
The miraculous display was precisely what Pyke needed to proceed with Project Habakkuk,
and top Allied officials gave the go-ahead to design, develop and build the aircraft carrier.
According to estimations, each Habakkuk ship had a price tag of 700,000 pounds
and would require 300,000 tons of wood pulp, 25,000 tons of fibreboard insulation,
35,000 tons of timber, and 10,000 tons of steel.
Prototype
Large amounts of ice were needed to build the aircraft carrier,
and Pyke turned to Canada's National Research Council for help.
The man in charge, C.J Mackenzie, once called the Habakkuk project a mad, wild scheme,
but chose Lake Patricia in Alberta as the test site due to its closeness to a
conscientious objectors camp, where men did free labor instead of joining the military.
The prototype would be a scale model weighing 1,000 tons and measuring 30 by 60 feet,
and would be kept cold throughout the summer
using a single horsepower motor designed to show off the technology under real-world conditions.
The original goal of the scale model was to test how well Pykrete held up
against several different explosives and weapons,
examine environmental durability, and troubleshoot the previously known issues.
The model took 8 men two weeks to complete and, according to onlookers,
seemed to hold up well enough against both nature and manmade explosives.
Upon its completion, Churchill ordered a full-scale vessel
and gave it the highest priority.
However, a full-sized Habakkuk was a tall order, and although completion was planned for mid-1944,
engineers hit a snag almost immediately regarding the extensive supply list.
As Pyke and his team soon discovered,
seasonally-driven temperature changes made steel-based internal support necessary,
requiring much more than estimated. Factoring in additional steel -already in high demand and low
supply- would triple the initial proposed cost, raising it to 2.5 million pounds.
In addition, the project was also met with creative and political snags,
as the United Kingdom wanted to ensure that America was just as invested in the idea
and began to phase Pyke out of the process.
Neverending Problems
By the summer of 1943, Habakkuk received significant criticism, observations,
and the expectations were through the roof.
With a planned 2,000-foot runway to accommodate the Royal Navy's heavy
bomber aircraft and thick Pyrkete walls to withstand German torpedos,
a single Habakkuk carrier would end up displacing no less than two million tons of water.
Like steel, wood was also in short supply,
and building merely one Habakkuk would immensely affect paper production.
While the vessel was expected to have a 7,000-mile range and handle the highest waves in open sea,
her colossal size brought unforeseen concerns about her speed and steering abilities.
Then, as the project kept dragging on, its complexities and variables made it clear
that the odds were stacked against Pyke's dream.
The final nail in the vessel's development was
that the complexity of insulating and refrigerating such a large ship
would have required time and manpower that none of the Allies could afford,
as the fighting was not only taking place in the Atlantic but in the rest of the world too.
The last meeting about Habakkuk's development then took place in December of 1943.
By that point, the war had evolved in several key factors,
with Portugal allowing the Allies to use their airfields and thus enabling
them to deploy more of their airborne U-boat patrols over the Atlantic ocean.
In addition, the increased production of traditional aircraft carriers
and the introduction of long-range fuel tanks that allowed for longer flight times over the ocean
turned the Habakkuk into an obsolete concept before she even took shape.
The remains of Habakkuk lie at the bottom of Patricia Lake in Alberta, where she proved
her potential when it took three hot Canadian summers for the test vessel to completely melt.
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