Project Habbakuk was a plan by the British in World War II to construct an "unsinkable" aircraft carrier out of ice, for use against German U-boats in the mid- Atlantic, which was out of range of land-based planes. Jump to: navigation, search World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th-century conflict that... Jump to: navigation, search An aircraft carrier is a warship whose main role is to deploy and recover aircraft—in effect acting as a sea-going airbase. ... A natural, 4 tonne, block of ice on a beach in Iceland Icicles Ice is the solid form of water. ... U-boat is also a nickname for some diesel locomotives built by GE; see List of GE locomotives October 1939. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Atlantic Ocean is Earths second-largest ocean, covering approximately one-fifth of its surface. ...

Boathouse made of Pykrete in Alberta

The Habbakuk, as proposed to Winston Churchill by Lord Mountbatten and Geoffrey Pyke, was to be approximately 2,000 feet long (600 m) and have a displacement of an amazing 2,000,000 tons or more, constructed in Canada from 280,000 blocks of ice (later changed to a mixture of ice and wood pulp known as Pykrete after Pyke, who proposed the Habbakuk project — the material was invented by others). The ship's deep draft would have kept it out of most harbours. Inside the vessel, protected by 50-foot-thick walls, a refrigeration plant would maintain the structure against melting. The ship would have extremely limited maneuverability, but was expected to be capable of up to 10 knots (18 km/h) using 26 electric drive motors mounted in separate external nacelles. Its armaments would have included 40 dual-barrelled 4.5" DP (dual-purpose) turrets and numerous light anti-aircraft guns, and it would have housed an airstrip and up to 150 twin-engined bombers or fighters. Image File history File links Boathouse made for Project Habbakuk made of Pykrete File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, FRS, PC (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. ... Jump to: navigation, search Sir Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, PC, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, FRS, (25 June 1900 – 27 August 1979) was a British admiral and statesman and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. ... Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke (1894–1948, by suicide) was a British inventor. ... The term displacement can have one of several meanings, depending on context: Displacement (distance), a physical quantity in kinematics Particle displacement, acoustics of sound in air Displacement (fluid), a different physical quantity, used in fluid mechanics and navigation; used as a measure of a ships size Engine displacement, a... Wood pulp is the most common material used to make paper. ... A block of Pykrete Pykrete is a composite material made of approximately 14% sawdust (or, less frequently, wood pulp) and 86% ice by weight, invented by Max Perutz and proposed during World War II by Geoffrey Pyke to the Royal Navy as a candidate material for making a huge, unsinkable... Jump to: navigation, search Refrigeration (from the Latin frigus, frost) is generally the cooling of a body by the transfer of a portion of its heat away from it. ... The word Nacelle is derived from the Old French nacele, which means a small boat or dinghy, and was in turn derived from the Latin navicella. ... American troops man an anti-aircraft gun near the Algerian coastline in 1943 Anti-aircraft warfare, or air defense, is any method of engaging military aircraft in combat from the ground. ...

A block of Pykrete

The Habbakuk would have been virtually impossible to sink, as it would have effectively been a streamlined iceberg or floating island kept afloat by the buoyancy of its construction materials. However, it was projected to take $70 million and 8000 people working for 8 months to construct, an expenditure which the British were unwilling to make at the time on such an experimental craft. Experiments on ice and pykrete as construction materials were carried out at Lake Louise, Alberta and a small prototype was constructed at Patricia Lake, Alberta, measuring only 60 feet by 30 feet (18 by 9 m), but Habbakuk itself was never begun. Image File history File links Image_0010. ... Image File history File links Image_0010. ... An iceberg (berg is the German word for mountain) is a large piece of ice that has broken off from a glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water. ... Floating Island can mean these: Floating islands, common natural phenomenon found in many parts of the world - see Floating island Angel Island, the floating island in the Sonic the Hedgehog series - see Angel Island (Sonic) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share... Lake Louise is located in the Canadian province of Alberta in Banff National Park. ... Jump to: navigation, search Motto: Fortis et Liber (Strong and free) Other Canadian provinces and territories Capital Edmonton Largest city Calgary Lieutenant-Governor Norman Kwong Premier Ralph Klein (PC) Area 661,848 km² (6th) • Land 642,317 km² • Water 19,531 km² (2. ... Born Patricia Van Cleeve was the daughter of actress Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst, and mother of Mary Collins (II). ...

The name Habbakuk was an Admiralty clerk's misspelling of the biblical name Habakkuk. The choice of this name is said to be a reference to the project's ambitious goal: "…be utterly amazed, for I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." ( Habakkuk 1:5, NIV) Jump to: navigation, search The Bible (sometimes The Book, Good Book, Word of God, or Scripture), from Greek (τα) βιβλια, (ta) biblia, (the) books, plural of βιβλιον, biblion, book, originally a diminutive of βιβλος, biblos, which in turn is derived from βυβλος—byblos, meaning papyrus, from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported this... Habakkuk or Havakuk (חֲבַקּוּק, Standard Hebrew Ḥavaqquq, Tiberian Hebrew Ḥăḇaqqûq) was a prophet in the Bible Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh. ... // The Prophet There is not much biographical information on the prophet Habakkuk; in fact less is known about this prophet than any other. ...

The ship is a fairly popular subject in alternative history fiction. Jump to: navigation, search Alternative history or alternate history is a genre of speculative fiction that is set in a world in which history has diverged from history as it is generally known; more simply put, alternate history asks the question, What If history had developed differently? Most works that...

References

• Perutz, M. F. (1948). A Description of the Iceberg Aircraft Carrier and the Bearing of the Mechanical Properties of Frozen Wood Pulp upon Some Problems of Glacier Flow. The Journal of Glaciology, 1 (3), 95–104

External Links

• History of project Habbakuk
• Pictures from the National Archives
• Criticism of project Habbakuk by Sir Charles Goodeve, Assistant Controller of Research and Development for the Admiralty during World War II, in an article original published in the London Evening Standard, April 19th, 1951.