The Forgotten WWII Plan to Build a Hulking Aircraft Carrier—Out of Ice
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Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:
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During World War II, there was a region of the Atlantic that aircraft could not reach to combat German U-boats, no matter where they were launched from.
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Eccentric inventor Geoffrey Pyke modified a material of wood pulp and ice created by scientist Max Perutz, and the result, called Pykrete, could build a floating glacier of an aircraft carrier.
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Towards the end of the war, it became evident that the carrier—codenamed Project Habakkuk—would take up a tremendous amount of resources, and it was eventually abandoned.
It was supposed to be the most imposing aircraft carrier ever built, many times the size of any that existed before or after, and engineered to take down German U-boats that stalked the Atlantic during World War II . It would be almost indestructible—and made almost entirely of ice.
Project Habakkuk was the brainchild of eccentric British inventor Geoffrey Pyke , who who worked at the Combined Operations Headquarters of the British War Office. The Navy needed an aircraft carrier to take planes out far enough to track down the Germans and provide a landing strip to refuel and replenish ammunition . After all, planes could strike U-boats faster than destroyers—leaving the submarines no choice except to dive and wait for the threat to clear—but there was a region known as the Atlantic Air Gap that land-based aircraft were unable to reach.
Pyke figured that an artificial glacier could possibly serve as a runway. There was just one problem. Icebergs are prone to cracking, sagging, and capsizing because most of their surface area is underwater. But there was a material stronger than ice alone.
Austrian scientist Max Perutz had already invented a buoyant material made of water and sawdust, which was insulted by a protective layer of wood pulp when submerged to keep it from melting, and it could also be shaped and molded. Pyke adjusted the ratios of wood pulp and water until he created a substance as strong as concrete , which eventually became known as Pykrete . After Pyke floated the idea to Lord Louis Mountbatten (Chief of Combined Operations), Mountbatten presented Pyke's proposal to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a group of high-ranking military officials.
Wanting to make an impression, he drew his pistol and shot at a block of ice, then a block of Pykrete. While the ice predictably ended up in shards, the bullet ricocheted off the Pykrete and grazed the pant leg of an admiral before hitting the wall. It was convincing enough that top brass approved the building of an aircraft carrier. The undertaking was codenamed Project Habakkuk , after the biblical book of Habakkuk .
With a deck length of 2,000 feet, a width of 250 feet, a thickness of at least 40 feet, 40 cannons, and an airstrip with double hangars that could handle up to 150 bombers or fighter planes, the project was highly ambitious. In its finished form, it would be able to withstand brutal waves and torpedo attacks. But it had one significant drawback—it had to be kept at exactly 3° F (-16° C), which would require an infrastructure of steel cooling pipes flowing with brine.
During the war, every scrap of steel and aluminum went towards tanks, ships, and other military vehicles and equipment, so there was not nearly enough to build an
aircraft carrier
. What started out as a ship that would have no need of steel suddenly demanded an incredible (and expensive) amount of it.
When construction on the prototype began in Canada during the fall of 1943, it became evident that there would be no aircraft carrier delivered by 1944 (when it had been estimated to be completed). The monolith of ice would also take at least eight months to build, need 8,000 workers, and would vacuum up a tremendous amount of resources. The 300,000 tons of wood pulp required would hold back Canadian paper production for years, not to mention the 10,000 tons of steel and the coolant system, which could further skyrocket costs.
Eventually, developments in the war removed the need for another aircraft carrier entirely. Portugal eventually allowed Allied forces to use the Azor airfields, which facilitated the hunt for U-boats, and officials increased the number of escort carriers protecting the merchant fleet from Axis forces in the Atlantic . Mountbatten withdrew his support for Project Habakkuk, and the entire endeavor was eventually abandoned—though the wood frame and steel boning of the prototype still lie at the bottom of Patricia Lake in Alberta, and can be seen by divers.
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