Great Britain's "Project Habakkuk"
One of the More Unusual Ideas to Come Out Of World War II
During the height of World War II, Winston Churchill authorized research concerning the construction of a new type of ship for his navy - an aircraft carrier made of ice.
There is no doubt that The Second World War was a time of great peril and grief throughout the world – it was a time when every involved nation knew that extreme measures would have to be taken in order to find success against their enemies. The most dramatic example of this, of course, is the use of the atomic bomb against Japan to finally end the war. In the midst of the war in Europe, however, Great Britain had perhaps an even more extreme and unusual idea.
Project Habakkuk
Project Habakkuk was proposed to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in December of 1942, when the war in the Atlantic Ocean was still at its worst. Many naval ships were being lost to German U-Boats (submarines), for their hulls were simply not strong enough to resist the torpedoes fired by their enemy.
According to (warning: impressively long name and title forthcoming) Admiral of the Fleet Lord Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GSCI, GCIE, GSVO, DSO, PC, a new tactic was needed to protect the British Navy against the Germans in the Atlantic. This is why he and his associate, a British Scientist and inventor named Geoffrey Pyke recommended to Churchill that a new (and somewhat peculiar) idea was in order.
They called it Project Habakkuk, and for some Churchill agreed to it (at first).
In essence, the idea was this:
They would build an aircraft carrier out of ice.
It would be, in effect, a giant, floating iceberg, complete with soldiers and guns. Like an iceberg, it would be heavy and draft incredibly deep in the water (displacing approximately 2,000,000 tons of water, where a normal carrier displaces something like 35,000 tons). It would be made of not just standard water-ice, but rather what was known as Pykrete (named after Geoffrey Pyke himself), which consists of around 20% wood pulp or sawdust, and 80% ice. Together, such a formula creates a very strong and very cold mixture, incredibly resistant to impact, especially from that of torpedoes. It would be, in effect, unsinkable.
The name for this monstrosity was quite fitting. Habakkuk was, after all, the Old Testament prophet who said: “Look over the nations and see, and be utterly amazed! For a work is being done in your days that you would not have believed, were it told” (Habakkuk 1:5). Quite true, really.
The Extent of the Project
Yes, this idea was seriously considered. The British were so serious that tests began almost immediately on Pykrete in the Canadian Rockies near Jasper lake in Alberta. A smaller prototype of a Pykrete ship (measuring only 60 feet long) was constructed under top-secret conditions. Unfortunately, the end result of this experiment was the discovery that a full-sized version of the ship would require more than 280,000 pykrete blocks – in an era when all natural resources were more valuable than ever, due to the war effort. Ice and wood pulp were both neither free nor cheap.
In addition, there were the obvious engineering complications to be concerned about, such as attempting to keep the ship from melting (the obvious question one has upon first hearing of this plan). There was a design for a refrigeration plant to be built into the ship itself that would circulate coolants throughout the hull in order to keep the pykrete from melting (though by the nature of its chemistry, pykrete takes several times longer to melt than ice in the first place). Then there had to be a way to keep the sailors on board relatively warm, which would require far too much insulation than could be reasonably afforded.
Project Habakkuk was scrapped long before work actually began on the full-sized model, but it is still quite amazing that they made it even as far as they did before coming to their senses.
Pros and Cons of Ships Made of Ice
Technologically speaking, an ice ship would truly have had many great benefits, as already mentioned. It would truly have been unsinkable, and in that sense much safer than an ordinary carrier.
On the other hand, the negatives probably outweigh the positives in this issue. It would have been bulky, slow and terribly expensive both to construct and to maintain, which makes it all simply not quite worth it in the long run.
If Project Habakkuk had been completed and fully implemented, who knows where it would have led. The Navy’s of the world might be made entirely out of pykrete at this point, and the price of ice would reach new and untold heights. Perhaps it is a good thing that this project failed before too much time, effort and money was spent on it.
References:
Asimov, Isaac. “Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts.”
“Churchill’s Unsinkable Carrier.”
“The Habakkuk Project.” The Royal Navy National Museum.
