"The Ice Aircraft Carrier, WWII." Topic

"The British concocted a scheme of making a gigantic aircraft carrier out of ice reinforced with sawdust. It was to be virtually unsinkable and large enough to carry multi-engine bombers. This concept was not an idle idea, but a genuine program worked on quite seriously."

YouTube link

Amicalement
Armand

One of my favorites :)

There's something slippery about the whole idea…

I love military charlatanism.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg….I'll get my coat…

I remember hearing about this on several occasions and feel a bit sorry for Churchill in all of this (from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete):

"Mountbatten's reaction to the breakthrough is recorded by Pyke's biographer David Lampe:

What happened next was explained several years after the war by Lord Mountbatten in a widely-quoted after-dinner speech. "I was sent to Chequers to see the Prime Minister and was told he was in his bath.

I said, 'Good, that's exactly where I want him to be.' I nipped up the stairs and called out to him, 'I have a block of a new material which I would like to put in your bath.'

After that he suggested that I should take it to the Quebec Conference." The demonstration in Churchill's steaming bath had been most dramatic. After the outer film of ice on the small pykrete cube had melted, the freshly exposed wood pulp kept the remainder of the block from thawing."

I personally wouldn't have taken kindly to Mountbatten barging in whilst I was having a hot bath and a cigar, and chucking a big lump of ice on my old-feller. It did apparently give Churchill food for thought however, which now appears to have been taken up in a new range of police launches here in Brisbane, all these years later:

Mountbatten and Churchill…
Now THAT is an unholy pair.

I have a micro scale one in my freezer.

This was covered on Mythbusters.

LOL! (smile).

Amicalement
Armand

@ DsGilbert: So was the myth busted or not?

The myth started with the legend of the ice carrier and ended up with this: YouTube link

This is also covered in Chapter 18 of the new "British Aircraft Carriers" book by David Hobbs.

MH

There is a few days left to listen, but the BBC has a Radio play about Pyke and HMS Habakkuk:

link

Mountbatten and Churchill…
Now THAT is an unholy pair.

Not so much, I think. Mountbatten was the son of Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was the First Sea Lord (before Fisher's return) at the start of WW1 while Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty. I guess they had been knowing each other fairly well, sort of avuncular relationship. The Battenbergs/Mountbattens certainly were a very qualified branch of the Windsors.

I recall seeing the lake in the Canadian Rockies where it was supposedly tested. (Lake Patricia I think??) Supposedly some sort of docking relic from it still there.