parsifal
Colonel
Project Habbakuk
According to some accounts, at the Quebec Conference in 1943 Lord Mountbatten brought a block of pykrete along to demonstrate its potential to the admirals and generals who accompanied Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mountbatten entered the project meeting with two blocks and placed them on the ground. One was a normal ice block and the other was pykrete. He then drew his service pistol and shot at the first block. It shattered and splintered. Next he fired at the pykrete to give an idea of the resistance of that kind of ice to projectiles. The bullet ricocheted off the block, grazing the trouser leg of Admiral Ernest King, and ended up in the wall.
Sir Alan Brooke's diaries support this account, telling how Mountbatten brought two blocks, one of ice and one of pykrete. After first shooting at the ice, with a warning to beware of splinters, Mountbatten said "I shall fire at the block on the right to show you the difference". Brooke reported that "the bullet rebounded out of the block and buzzed round our legs like an angry bee".
Max Perutz gave an account of a similar incident in his book I Wish I Made You Angry Earlier. A demonstration of pykrete was given at Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ) by a naval officer, Lieutenant Commander Douglas Grant, who was provided by Perutz with rods of ice and pykrete packed with dry ice in thermos flasks and large blocks of ice and pykrete. Grant demonstrated the comparative strength of ice and pykrete by firing bullets into both blocks: the ice shattered, but the bullet rebounded from the pykrete and hit the Chief of the Imperial Staff (Sir Alan Brooke) in the shoulder. Brooke was unhurt.
Later in 1943 Habbakuk began to lose priority. Mountbatten listed several reasons:
Demand for steel for other purposes was too great.
Permission had been received from Portugal to use airfields in the Azores, which facilitated the hunting of U-boats in the Atlantic
The introduction of long-range fuel tanks allowed British-based aircraft extra patrol time over the Atlantic
The numbers of escort carriers were being vastly increased.
In addition, Mountbatten himself withdrew from the project.
The final meeting of the Habbakuk board took place in December 1943. It was officially concluded that "The large Habbakuk II made of pykrete has been found to be impractical because of the enormous production resources required and technical difficulties involved."
The use of ice had actually been falling out of favour before that, and other ideas for "floating islands" had been considered, such as welding Liberty Ships or landing craft together (Project TENTACLE).
A prototype scale model of the pykrete took three hot summers to completely melt the prototype constructed in Canada. A full scale version
Perutz wrote that he stayed in Washington D.C. while U.S. Navy engineers evaluated the viability of Habbakuk. He concluded: "The U.S. Navy finally decided that Habakkuk was a false prophet. One reason was [that] the enormous amount of steel needed for the refrigeration plant that was to freeze the pykrete was greater than that needed to build the entire carrier of steel, but the crucial argument was that the rapidly increasing range of land-based aircraft rendered floating islands unnecessary."
According to some accounts, at the Quebec Conference in 1943 Lord Mountbatten brought a block of pykrete along to demonstrate its potential to the admirals and generals who accompanied Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mountbatten entered the project meeting with two blocks and placed them on the ground. One was a normal ice block and the other was pykrete. He then drew his service pistol and shot at the first block. It shattered and splintered. Next he fired at the pykrete to give an idea of the resistance of that kind of ice to projectiles. The bullet ricocheted off the block, grazing the trouser leg of Admiral Ernest King, and ended up in the wall.
Sir Alan Brooke's diaries support this account, telling how Mountbatten brought two blocks, one of ice and one of pykrete. After first shooting at the ice, with a warning to beware of splinters, Mountbatten said "I shall fire at the block on the right to show you the difference". Brooke reported that "the bullet rebounded out of the block and buzzed round our legs like an angry bee".
Max Perutz gave an account of a similar incident in his book I Wish I Made You Angry Earlier. A demonstration of pykrete was given at Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ) by a naval officer, Lieutenant Commander Douglas Grant, who was provided by Perutz with rods of ice and pykrete packed with dry ice in thermos flasks and large blocks of ice and pykrete. Grant demonstrated the comparative strength of ice and pykrete by firing bullets into both blocks: the ice shattered, but the bullet rebounded from the pykrete and hit the Chief of the Imperial Staff (Sir Alan Brooke) in the shoulder. Brooke was unhurt.
Later in 1943 Habbakuk began to lose priority. Mountbatten listed several reasons:
Demand for steel for other purposes was too great.
Permission had been received from Portugal to use airfields in the Azores, which facilitated the hunting of U-boats in the Atlantic
The introduction of long-range fuel tanks allowed British-based aircraft extra patrol time over the Atlantic
The numbers of escort carriers were being vastly increased.
In addition, Mountbatten himself withdrew from the project.
The final meeting of the Habbakuk board took place in December 1943. It was officially concluded that "The large Habbakuk II made of pykrete has been found to be impractical because of the enormous production resources required and technical difficulties involved."
The use of ice had actually been falling out of favour before that, and other ideas for "floating islands" had been considered, such as welding Liberty Ships or landing craft together (Project TENTACLE).
A prototype scale model of the pykrete took three hot summers to completely melt the prototype constructed in Canada. A full scale version
Perutz wrote that he stayed in Washington D.C. while U.S. Navy engineers evaluated the viability of Habbakuk. He concluded: "The U.S. Navy finally decided that Habakkuk was a false prophet. One reason was [that] the enormous amount of steel needed for the refrigeration plant that was to freeze the pykrete was greater than that needed to build the entire carrier of steel, but the crucial argument was that the rapidly increasing range of land-based aircraft rendered floating islands unnecessary."
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