Our ongoing title for this series could well have been Prime Minister Churchill's reaction to a hypothetical proposal if it had been presented by Lord Mountbatten during their impromptu wartime discussion which took place in the PM's bathroom as he washed himself...Upon barging in on one of Churchill's few private moments since 1940, and tossing a block of frozen sawdust slush into his warm bathwater, this conversation might have ensued...
LM: "Here Winnie, play with this"...The block Mountbatten had introduced to the PM's tub was made of Pykrete, a mixture by weight of 14% sawdust and 86% water frozen into a solid mass, then sawn into blocks which could be assembled into structures capable of floating, and housing equipment and personnel...Pykrete was the brainchild of inventor and random thinker, Geoffrey Pyke, an individualist if there ever was one...
PMC: "Have you taken leave of your senses, Louis?...I'm trying to wash off the dust from an air-raid shelter inspection, and you want to play with tub toys?"...
LM: "Winnie, old boy, you'll notice that toy is frozen, yet it hasn't melted in your hot bath"...
PMC: "For once you're right, Mountbatten...Now what am I expected to do with it?"...
LM: "Mr. Prime Minister, we expect you to appropriate the needed funds to build an aircraft carrier from this...Hock the King's crown if necessary"...
PMC: "You expect me to do WHAT?"...
Given the already menacing fleet of U-boats launched by Nazi Germany against England's most dominant and fearsome weapon, the Royal Navy, with orders to sink British shipping at will, a counter-attack method was desperately needed by the embattled Britons...Some innovative thinkers had already conceived of flattening the tops of large icebergs found in the North Atlantic for use as launch and recovery vehicles for submarine-hunting aircraft...
This idea never gained traction due to the large portion of the bergs which remained underwater, making it difficult to quickly move them where needed, even though it provided a built-in defense against submarine attack...Mountbatten already knew of this plan and its drawbacks, but when presented with the idea of constructing a floating island from Pykrete, one that could be powered internally and easily repaired at sea, he decided to present it to the allies at the first Quebec Conference...
An often quoted story asserts that Mountbatten entered the conference room with a block of ice and a similar sized block of Pykrete which he had placed on the floor...Calling the other conferees' attention, he drew his sidearm and shot first into the iceblock, then into the Pykrete...Predictably, the iceblock shattered into small pieces offering no protection for anything behind it...
The Pykrete, however, suffered a small gouge as the bullet bounced off, and was sent through the pantleg of Adm. Ernest King's uniform...If King's injuries had been more than just sartorial, he might not have found much sympathy as he was one of the most universally disliked commanders of WWII...
Although at this point in the war Allied concerns had not reached the desperation level over the Axis gains in battles both on land and at sea, serious consideration was given to almost any innovative suggestion that might lead to the Allies gaining the upper hand...Since forward airbases were urgently needed in the North Atlantic with which to combat the U-boat fleet set loose by the Kriegsmarine, research assets were set aside to develop the idea of a frozen, mobile, floating haven for the launching, recovery and servicing of warplanes...
The idea of using Pykrete to build aircraft carriers was certainly not Pyke's strangest suggestion, but may have been looked at as his least impractical...Among other brainstorms, he conceived hiding equipment used in behind-the-lines covert operations inside buildings marked "Officer's Latrine" in German, thinking that no Wehrmacht enlisted man would dare look inside...
Not entirely surprisingly, Churchill warmed to the idea right away after Mountbatten fielded it to him, and with support from these two, it took on shape as Project Habakkuk under the umbrella of Combined Operations Headquarters...The urgency of need that was driving the project led to some tests on Pykrete being delayed up to a point where it was found that certain deficiencies affecting its longevity required design changes which more than tripled the original cost estimates...
Intended mission requirements also affected the design as added use by heavy bombers stretched the flight deck to 4,000 X 600 feet...Displacement would have exceeded 2 million tons, and the hull would have been at least 40 feet thick for protection against torpedo attack...No canal or dock on the planet would have been able to accommodate its size even if one existed in a climate cold enough to preserve the Pykrete's temperature...
Other problems included mounting the estimated 100 foot rudder, and isolating the heat-producing propulsion units away from the frozen Pykrete material...A 1,000 ton model was constructed in Canada to prove the project's viability, and 400,000 tons of material were procured for a larger version before the undertaking was cancelled...
Advancements in aircraft flight time, new strategically located airfields and the decryption of the German Enigma Code made further development of the frozen giant unnecessary in the North Atlantic war...The always unbalanced, but forever curious Geoffrey Pyke outlived the Axis leadership, but took his own life in 1948...
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