Fiddlers Green

This may be off the wall question, but recently I read a 1984 maqazine artical about a women who was diving in a canadian lake and discovered the structual remains of a successful attempt to test the feasability of using wood pulp mixed in water then frozen with refrigeration pipes to form a flotating ice ship big enough to provide landing space for large airplanes to protect convoys to england. it said that the project was cancelled because new airplanes had greator range and atlantic island bases were built. does any body know where I can find more information on this.

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cowboy

I saw that on the History Channel about wierd allies weapons. It was a scale model of the HMS Habecook (sp?). Churchill wanted a carrier that couldn't be sunk so they tried to develop one. Never got past the planning stages though. The ice & wood pulp mixture was called Pycrete. I'm think that's how it's spelled.

Actually it's pykrete. Google it, It's fun.

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We have enough youth. How about a "Fountain of Smart".

www.ussorleck.org/reports/02-08-05.html, breifly tells the story of what the women found in the lake. Interseting story in lord montbatten history, he had a block of pykrete in a meeting with churchhill and allied generals, he shot a block of ice and it shattered then he shot a plock of pykrete and the bullet rickosayed and hit an american general in the leg. churchill like the idea so much he had a block put in the bath with him to see how it float.

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cowboy

Supposedly, if the ship were to get hit and lose some of the ice, there was a refrigeration plant on board and they could make more. It was supposed to have a massively thick hull as well so that a hit wouldn't do that much damage.

I still don't know why there was no post-war follow-up on the idea. We could have saved a bundle on the aircraft carriers we have now. Steel is expensive, and wood-pulp does'nt rust.

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I'm not wierd! I'm normality impaired!