Britain's Plan To Build a 2,000 Foot Aircraft Carrier Almost Entirely From Ice (bbc.com)

dryriver writes from a report via the BBC: In World War 2, Britain was losing the Battle of the Atlantic, with German U-boats sinking ship after ship. Enter Project Habakkuk, the incredible plan to build an aircraft carrier from ice. The British government wanted a better way of battling German U-boats and needed an aircraft carrier invulnerable to torpedoes and bombs. Inventor Geoffrey Pyke came up with the idea of using solid blocks of ice, strengthened with sawdust, creating the material Pykrete, to build a ship big enough for bombers to land on. Winston Churchill became interested in the plan after Pyke pitched it to him. The proposed ship was to be 610 meters (2,013 feet) long and weigh 1.8 Million tons, considerably larger and heavier than today's biggest ships. It would have hull armor 12 meters (40 feet) thick. Work on building a proof-of-concept prototype started at Patricia Lake, Canada. But when it became clear that the finished aircraft carrier would take until 1945 to build, and cost 10 million pounds, the British government cancelled the project in 1943, and the prototype in Canada was scuppered.

Comments

Prototype Dismantling

[konohitowa]

I'm assuming they melted it down for scrap.

Re:Prototype Dismantling

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I'm assuming they melted it down for scrap.

During WWII, the British MI6 Secret Service used it for strategic purposes:

"Shaken . . . not stirred!"

Stalin's spies in Canada discovered the project, and the Soviets commissioned an elite team of scientists to develop a weapon to combat the ice carrier in the coming Cold War.

The scientists decided that vodka laden bombs and torpedoes would melt the ice, and started extensive testing.

Stalin was later furious when he learned that the scientists had simply quaffed the vodka.

A similar project was started Los Alamos, using cheap Mexican Tequila . . . which ended up in margaritas for the staff. Richard Feynman told this story in his book, "Surely, you want salt on the rim, Dr. Feynman".

The Los Alamos margarita ice experiments were essential in leading Feynman to find ice as the cause of the space shuttle explosion, and demonstrated this before Congress by putting a space shuttle rubber O-ring in a frozen margarita.

Re:Very relevant news

[Rei]

People need to watch the History channel more often.

Yeah! Where else can we all go to learn that aliens built the pyramids, Bigfoot has been captured, and Hitler didn't die in World War II?

Little known fact

[93 Escort Wagon]

The prototype, although abandoned, took many years to melt. In 1975, a large chunk of the remaining ice drifted into the shipping lanes of Lake Superior and was struck by the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, which was being piloted by Jimmy Hoffa.

Re:Very relevant news

[Anonymous Coward]

Hitler didn't die in World War II
I don't know when he died, but somebody has been cloning him. I keep hearing that many people are literally Hitler.