Project Habbakuk

The wartime brainchild of British scientist Geoffrey Pyke, Project Habbakuk envisaged the creation of an aircraft carrier made of ice.

The project took its name from Habakkuk, the Old Testament prophet:

'Behold ye among the heathen, and regard and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told to you.'

The iceberg aircraft carrier was planned to provide aircraft to operate in the mid-Atlantic, to combat Germany's submarine menace. Thereafter, the assault on mainland Europe was to be launched

from the giant 'berg ship'.

Both Mountbatten and Churchill supported the project, and Pyke deemed his ship unsinkable, as well as cheap to produce, using Pykrete, a compound of paper pulp and sea water. A model ship was built in in Canada and Pykrete demonstrated its strength in firing trials, but the enormity of the project proved to

great to bear. The project was abandoned before the end of the war.