A Floating Airfield Made of Ice - WW2 Newsflash
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2022
- In 1943, the British are working on a radical plan which could revolutionize the Allies' productive capacity. It might sound crazy, but ice might be the magic material they need.
Join us on Patreon: / timeghosthistory
Or join the TimeGhost Army directly at: timeghost.tv/signup/
Check out our TimeGhost History RUclips channel: / timeghost
Between 2 Wars: • Between 2 Wars
Follow WW2 Day by Day on Instagram: @ww2_day_by_day
Follow TimeGhost History on Instagram: @timeghosthistory
Like us on Facebook: / timeghosthistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Ian Sowden
Written by: Francis van Berkel and Radu Lengher
Research by: Radu Lengher and Francis van Berkel
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Sietse Kenter
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
Colorizations by:
Mikołaj Uchman
Source literature list: bit.ly/WW2sources
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocean.com
Image sources:
IWM TR1230, A14107
Archives Society of Alberta
National Research Council Canada Archives
Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Weapon of Choice - Fabien Tell
Sailing for Gold - Howard Harper-Barnes
Seasons Of Change - Gavin Luke
Last Point of Safe Return - Fabien Tell
A Sophisticated Affair - Gavin Luke
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Join the TimeGhost Army at timeghost.tv/signup/
So, you guys tell us. Given the context of the time, is Habbakuk so crazy?
Please check out our rules of conduct before commenting: community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
Project Habbakuk might not have been "crazy," but it's not enough for an idea to work, it has to work better than the alternatives, and preferably sooner. By mid-1943, "sooner" was off the table since the Allies had already won the Battle of the Atlantic as you point out, due to a convergence of more conventional technologies such as escort carriers and long-range land-based B-24 Liberators closing the Mid-Atlantic air gap. Given that radical new technologies typically encounter unexpected problems, they may require lengthy development. Thus even if Project Habbakuk had been in the works back in early 1940, when it was really needed, the first version might have required time-consuming modifications, making it worse than useless. Therefore, whether or not Project Habbakuk was "crazy," it wasn't competitive. It does, however, sound like the kind of idea Hitler could have gotten behind, like the rest of his Wonder Weapons, had someone on the German side gotten the idea. Maybe the British should have stuck the plans on their Operation Mincemeat corpse, to trick the Germans into wasting resources on trying to develop it.
Wasn't there a novel touching the topic, maybe Cliver Cussler or Alistair MacLean?
I had read something long long ago around or before 2000
when thought up the GAP was still open... An ice touch and go "carrier" used for refueling and rearming as a floating block would have been very beneficial. Bear in mind other "crazy" things were the Weasal, using pipe pigs to move material to shore instead of docks, Wallis's tall boy and dam buster bombs, Hobarts Funnies as a result of Dieppe failed pinch raid, limpet ship mines, Turing Bombe, etc etc etc... Solutions for impossible tasks needed "crazy" people. Thanks GOD for crazy !!!!
No...not crazy at all. Looking at ways to win
I would be interested in how a more conventionally sized (based on internal, usable volume) Habbakuk carrier would compare, in cost.
Not so much a crazy idea, but a little wild it got that far before someone calculated how much pulp and machinery it would need to be possible, which seems like a pretty basic thing to do. Kind of points to Mountbatten and Churchill being taken for a ride, imo. But it *was* 1943, with an still unpredictable war, with many technological innovations that must have seemed as strange a Pykrete aircraft carrier, still looming ahead.
The Canadians built a small prototype Habbakuk on a lake near Banff, Alberta.
It took three summers for the Canadian prototype to melt completely!
Not Banff, Jasper
Patricia lake just outside of Jasper
How warm are the summers there?
It’s actually a very popular scuba dive for Alberta divers. I’ve been up to Patricia lake a number of times over the years. It’s quite well preserved in the depths of the cold water of Patricia lake. There is even a historical Marker On the site.
@@Casa-de-hongos can easily get to 35°C. 25 to 30°C is pretty common. Winter is anywhere from -10 to -40°C
One of the funniest anecdotes from this part of the war is how the "demonstration" was misunderstood. The Allied upper command was meeting in the same building or something and they were SO pissed off and shouting at each other that when the staff heard gunshots they thought that the generals of the allied war effort had started shooting at each other.
My god, egos so big that they could generate gravity.
It was the same meeting. The officers described as being involved in the demonstration were the Allied upper command (at least the US and UK parts).
If Mountbatten had killed King (which sounds very monarchial) that would have been interesting to cover up.
this was detailed in last week's regular episode
10:39 Missed opportunity for the pun "impractical Pyke dream"
Perhaps "dodged" would be the better word. 😃
Funnily enough, Mountbatten was one of the few British officers King genuinely got along with, apparently because King respected people that stuck to their guns, perhaps somewhat literally in this case.
Lord Battenberg was quite the entertainer yeah.
Sadly also a useless politician
I love Drachinifel’s video on King, especially for his relationship with British officers :D
@@serban031 "Semper Iratus" ;)
What's white and goes 1000miles an hour? Lord Mountbatten's plimsoles. Where did lord Mountbatten go for his holidays? Everywhere. 🤣
@@aussiviking604 too soon
I suppose the failure of this experiment put the rest of the Pykrete tests on ice.
It was really a moment, frozen In time.
It passed all the tests. It was the cost that did it in. Terrible pun. Might as well have made a MY WIFE joke.
@@DanielJamesEgan Pass all the tests you want, if you can't afford to make it then the progress melts away all the same.
@@AppleBiscuits no shit. I was commenting on your terrible pun.
@@DanielJamesEgan I bet you're a joy at parties.
Pyke was a first cousin of the wonderful and extremely eccentric Magnus Pyke, whom many British people grew up watching on various television science programmes in the 70s and 80s.
Magnus was a food scientist during WWII and invented a form of black pudding that contained human blood.
People may also know him as the guy who shouts “Science!” In Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science”
Magnus provided advice on diet for WW2 and the immediate period thereafter, which is still essentially correct even today.
What a family
I went to one of Magnus Pyke's lectures , he was very entertaining and very good at explaining concepts. Part of the lecture included an aside about Pycrete as some people had mistakenly assumed he and not Geoffrey had invented it. If Geoffrey was as compelling as Magnus, I'm not surprised everyone was enthusiastic.
They say 99% of all new ideas are stupid, while true genius lies in the remaining 1%.
Pykrete ships was not part of that 1%.
You have to wade through oceans of shite to find the occasional nugget. And what a nugget it will be. You gotta admit though, the Habbakuk class carriers would have made for very interesting what if and/or alternative history scenarios. Just like Nazi miracle tech.
Wasn’t given a chance
@@tomhenry897 They gave it enough of a chance to conclude that it would be horrendously expensive to build. And while it would be unsinkable and effectively immune to torpedoes, it would still be vulnerable to bombs. Even if the outer hull can't be destroyed, its interior can still be gutted by fire.
@@alltat Also, the reality was that the USA could churn out Liberty ships faster than they were being sunk and the reduction of resources available to Germany as a whole meant that the number of subs started to dwindle. Add in Tallboy that could take out the hardened shelters on the coast of Europe and the use of the Liberator and more Sunderlands for mid-Atlantic patrol work and the use of the Azores, and the U-boat menace reduced.
@@alltat Bombs wouldn't have been an issue if the thing was parked in the mid-Atlantic, only torpedoes and shell-fire from U-boats. And they'd be nuts to go up against it with the amount of air power it would be able to launch in response.
The bigger issue is that it was an obsolete concept by mid-1943. Even if it could be built relatively inexpensively there wasn't much of a use for it once the German Navy pulled back due to heavy losses. And by the time WWII ended and the Cold War kicked off in earnest, long-range bombers and transport planes were common enough that there weren't many air gaps left over oceans anywhere on the planet. If you need sea power in the nuclear age, it's better to build multiple carrier fleets that can scatter and travel quickly instead of a few enormous fortresses that would be easy targets.
The Mythbusters did a test of Pykerete and found that using newsprint soaked in water and frozen was stronger than that made from wood chips.
I heard the story of trying to break up icebergs by dropping bombs from the air, firing large caliber explosive shells from naval vessels, and dropping carbon black on them to soak up solar energy and thus "melt" the berg. Alas, none worked. The ice just absorbed the concussion from the explosives, and the carbon black just slid into the sea along with the thin layer of water it and the sun created!
Well I'm sure the people conducting those tests would be happy to hear that humanity is finally making real progress in our war on icebergs!
Makes sense about the print but that means rather than straight would need to produce pulp into paper first, so would be an extra step unless could get a bunch old papers to recyxle
Pyke read Nat Geo and thunk
Let's make a ship can't be sunk
His project got tossed
Due to it's cost
Sometimes a great notion is bunk!
A splendid extra episode. Bravo! Go Astros!
Brilliant! Go Astros!
Good episode. I wonder if Pyrecrete and Habbakuk were the source of the "floating fortresses" of George Orwell's "1984" ?
I was wondering the same thing.
Could be, but not necessary. "Aircraft carriers, but bigger" is pretty obvious (especially as there's a good chance they exist only in propaganda form).
idk i feel like its mainly just from aircraft carriers in general as they were also called/described as floating fortresses also all pyrecrete and habbakuk are are just giant aircraft carriers made of ice instead of steel
This was the first thing I thought of as well.
I though floating fortresses were literall floating fortresses...
Imagine a ice aircraft carrier, HMS Titanic
HMCS Titanic!
This idea is so crazy, this episode almost seems like an April's Fools special. But it isn't and that's why I love history
Yorick-This shows how desperate the Allies were at this point in the war.
Fast forward to today, just imagine how much more practical this would be -- invention of plastic/polymers to replace wood, and nuclear powered engines that can provide almost unlimited refrigeration capacity in a much smaller package...
Geoffrey Pyke was the cousin of Magnus Pyke, the man who "blinded us with science".
I've ridden by the lake where this prototype was built! The lake is so clear you can still see parts of the wooden superstructure on clear days.
Hearing you mention Lord Mountbatten recalled me where that name originated. His father, Prince Louis of [edit[ Battenberg, was an officer in the Royal Navy in Queen Victoria's, King Edward VII's and King George V's reigns. He was First Sea Lord at the start of the Great War. There was media driven anti-German sentiment in England during the Great War which resulted in the King changing his house from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor. The King requested that Louis change his house as well so he renounced his German titles and adopted the surname, Mountbatten.
The name was Batten_berg_ , which also explains his new name - "Berg" means "mountain" in German.
Great piece of information, thank you
And because of his sexual reputation this was often changed to "Mountbottom".
Hey Indy! how''s it goin?
Hey, this is the intern! It's going great!
Hugely intriguing concept, great video, but just a note that Louis Mountbatten is "Louie" not "Lewis" (British English to American English)
Merci
Geoffrey Pyke is surely one of the more interesting characters of WWII. A shame his invention didn't' get off the ground. Nicely done video.
The story actually continued much further when it was discovered that wood pulp could easily be supplied by grinding up a fraction of the inexhaustible supple of paperwork generated in Washington D.C. . ( In fact Admiral King himself offered to demonstrate the fitness of the modified material by firing a Thompson at it with Mountbatten standing nearby.) Now able to " think big " about the project, the notion of a few carrier-style craft was abandoned in favor of an ice-bridge across the Atlantic from Nova Scotia to England's Western approaches. Sadly, competition for resources began almost immediately when Nimitz ordered a team of SeaBees to begin work on an ice bridge from Alaska to Hawaii. An Outraged MacArthur demanded said bridge be extended to New Zealand and thence to Mindanao. Only a hurried study by Coastal Command Weather Spotters caused some hesitation when it suggested that covering roughly another forty percent of the earth's surface with ice would cause a widespread temperature drop would not only result in a commensurate drop in world food production, but devastate the harvest of gutta-percha, a material essential to the manufacture of pith-helmets and fine quality golf balls. Shaken by the unseen and catastrophic outcome of the plan they had almost put into motion, the senior military leaders of the Allied Forces to a man swore they would never again risk a technology that might have such far-reaching unforeseen effects. ( Although King would continue his search for something that could only be demonstrated with small arms fire in Mountbatten's vicinity. )
if they put seabees on it, you know it would have worked. those guys don't quit.
I'm not sure if your yanking my chain. Regardless, this is awesome
I only wish I could Like this more than once. More, please!
I see hindsight in full evidence here. Habbakuk was a great idea that perhaps in the future will be seen as ahead of its time. May we never lose the capacity to adopt and enthuse over "crazy" ideas.
Nearly all the best ideas are crazy until they work.
Thank you. Everyone seems to use what they know in 2022 to criticize new ideas in 1942, as if everything should have been obvious. Sometimes you don't know if something will work until you try it.
As I said earlier, if a guy named Columbus, etc.
And many obviously terrific ideas fail. The government seems to try them all.
Fascinating. Strangely, I'd never heard of this extraordinary footnote to WWII history. Many thanks!
Thank you for watching, john!
I made a block of pykrete in high school to show off to my science teacher. I think I used shredded newspaper in it instead of sawdust or otherwise. Nobody could shatter it, and I left it happily in my locker for weeks without it melting.
That's really cool!
My aerospace engineer friend tells me nothing is impossible with the right team and the money 💰 to do it. Thanks for the video, great job, guys.
Wars, space races and other technological crash programs show time and again that your friend is right
That's what guys in aerospace always say.
Thank you Go4Um. Imagine what the next century can bring if we focus on uplifting humanity's well being and rights and progressing technology.
War is the mother of necessity and necessity is . . . you know the rest. The Rand Corporation studied the feasibility of towing icebergs to California for fresh water. Just towing would lose most of the mass to melting, but they figured out that a *wrapped* iceberg that retained the cold melt water would survive the journey. A field study of making tunnels in ice for housing found out that ice doesn't hold its shape for long.
Yes, this was a real idea and could have worked within reason - however it wasn’t needed 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇬🇧
"I got my project funded and all it took was nearly killing an American admiral."
Well, King hated the British anyway, so no big loss, I guess?
Looks at the Anglo phobic admiral King.
British chife of staff, "we need to shoot I again just show how good this stuff is"
There were those at the time who believed that shooting Admiral King would have shortened the war.
Wasn't there an episode of Mythbusters where they built a speedboat out of Pykrete-style slabs that functioned fairly well?
Yes. It was effective but short-lived because it lacked the thermal mass of a solid block.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU World War Two channel for giving me a terrific video to refer people to in order to demonstrate why Pykrete was not a dumb idea...as some channels mistakenly claim. ✌💯😁
Thank you, glad we could help
Geoffrey Pyke was a cousin of Magnus Pyke, who was well known, as an eccentric scientist on British TV in the 70s.
Pyke was what you would call, "an idea man." Another of this ideas was to send a special force of "winterized" snow commandos to Norway with some specially-designed armored snowmobiles, to harass the Germans. The men selected and trained for this mission became the First Special Service Force, which, during the Italian campaign became known as "The Devil's Brigade."
Put an iceberg up against an unsinkable ocean liner and we know which will win!
In the Tabletop Wargame "Dystopian Wars" (a Victorian Sci-Fi naval and air combat game set in 1870) The Prussian Imperium (one of the factions) have a model called the "Ice Maiden" which is a 28cm/11" long brick of resin that in the lore is made of Pykrete. Got two of them in my wargaming travel bag.
I remember when Mythbusters came up to Alaska to test the theory. It was a lot of fun to watch them doing laps in the water as they tried it out.
Imagine if some of the Mulberry Harbour components had been made from Pykcrete?
Ah yes, like the bat bomb and the pigeon guided missile from the Americans, trust the British to come up with wacky and unusual ideas like the this pykrete aircraft carrier. Glad to see this being covered by the team!
The pidgeon guided missile is for me still today the craziest weapon design ever
@@angeledduirbonesu1989 I think an illegal substance was involved in the idea for the great Panjandrum.
The pigeon guided missile worked so perfectly they burned down their own base by accident. :D
@@angeledduirbonesu1989 Not the chicken powered nuclear land mine the british came up with in the cold war?
Stop the pigeon! Muttly
Not crazy at all. I think that it might've worked brilliantly as long as Pykecrete were used on the outside sparingly. The allies could've simply cast the vessel in the arctic & sent it down & parked it in any part of the north Atlantic needing convoy air cover. Hangars, propulsion & support systems could've all been modularized, detatched from the Pyke-crete hull once it melted too much, & re-used on the next hull getting cast. Wood pulp & hay make astonishingly effective insulation. In New England they used to farm ice from lakes, pack it in hay, & used it for cold-boxes all through the summer & fall. It worked like a charm.
One of the main problems they discovered was that ice does not remain in a stable form, even without melting. Like glaciers flow, ice slowly "flows" where pressure and gravity drags it. So even if you built such a vessel in sub-zero conditions and kept it there, it would slowly lose shape.
You could use it as armour, probably - fitting the hull of a conventional ship with pykrete-filled boxes, or something like that. As main material for construction, it's unfortunately not very good.
My grandfather had an ice harvesting business in New England. He sold it during WWII because his sons were all called up for service. World war two pretty much killed what was already a dying business. Pykrete ships present a significant challenge no matter where you try to build them. Building them in the artic requires vast amounts of energy to melt and desalinate the water. Building them further south requires vast amounts of energy for refrigeration. Either way requires huge energy expenditures to produce a marginal result.
@@danielstickney2400 Hey! My grandfather was probably one of your grandfather's customers. Nice to meet you! 😄
The lesson this leaves me with is that it's always important to crunch some numbers to assess if a project is feasible, before ever starting it.
The fact that I'm just learning about this genius is down right criminal. God I love WW2 ingenuity
Mythbusters did a great episode making their own Pkyrete boat.
To win a war like WWII you have to explore and exploit all options. If someone's efforts do not fall through it should not be seen as a waste.
If there were a British version of The Man in the High Castle, Habbakuk would almost certainly be present.
Louis as in Louie Armstrong or the song by The Kingsmen 1963. His home was in Romsey near where I lived in the UK and he opened the radio station I worked at there.
I wonder how a Pykrete version of the Mulberry Harbours would have fared.
Clearly the surface area to volume ratio would have been less favourable but one Mulberry was destroyed and the other damaged not by German action but by nature.
I wonder if Pykrete harbours would have fared better - although it is an "alternative universe" speculation and we will never know.
Pykrete doesn't sink.
The Mulberries were based off of sunken surplus ships and concrete caissons flooded to sink into the channel bed.
While extremely strong, Pykrete doesn't sink. Therefore, it would have been completely useless to the Mulberry project.
@@frankshaffer7645 Not completely useless - there were floating components such as the Bombardon breakwaters. But concrete was available and did the job, no need for any additional risk.
@@frankshaffer7645 Mulberry was also designed to be flexible in order to handle the changing tides and currents and storms that hit the coast. A ginormous iceberg would probably just get pushed into the coast or back out to sea when the storm hit.
a buddy of mine wrote a novel using this concept: Arctic Fire by Paul Byers.
It was his idea for the First Special Force and that worked.
I knew that someone else would know that!
You guys are the best channel on RUclips. Just consistently awesome stuff from you.
Thank you very much, we appreciate the kind words.
"Nothing cheaper than water"
Nestle: we'll see about that
Just had an idea: Construct vast Picrete ice flows using ocean waste instead of wood chips. Use these to house polar bears and other Arctic life endangered by melting ice-caps.
That's an intriguing idea. Maybe you should run with that, for real. 🤔
Since 1992 the ice caps lost over 7500 billion tonnes of ice, I doubt anybody is gonna pay to make 7500 billion tonnes of pykrete
I've always wanted a better look into this. Thank you so much for that
Thank you Marc
In the British R&D establishment thereafter, 'For the remainder of the war the "micro-habakkuk" became the measure of unsoundness of certain inventions, the "micro-" being introduced to avoid decimals.'
Videos like this are why I watch and support this channel. I learn something new and fascinating about the war with every video. Great job guys and keep up the good work!
Thank you for your incredible support! We can't express how much a difference it makes, so please stay tuned for many more specials like this!
Do you think Pykrete may have been more successful if it was scaled down? One of the reasons it was dropped was because of the massive amount of resources needed to make it work. So maybe don't make it nearly twice as long as a modern nuclear powered aircraft carrier? A lot of problems with equipment in this war is that they're too big for their own good.
I was wondering the same. The diagram shows pretty thick walls so I would wonder how comparable internal volume boats stack up.
No, because the whole idea proved impractable and by the time they finished the proof of concept the Allies already had air bases on Iceland, the Azores, Brazil, North Africa and several dozen far more useful escort carriers. Of course they couldn't have known the artificial iceberg idea would prove impractical until they tested it and they sorta-kinda did implement the concept of an airbase in the middle of the Atlantic by renting real islands instead of building artificial islands out of ice.
I read about this some time ago but the way I heard it was that after the Titanic sank the Royal Navy sent a couple cruisers out to destroy the offending iceberg. A report confirmed that the cruisers could not even damage the iceberg.
Indy's got some tongue twisters in here: "Pyke's Pipe Dream" and "Barbiturate Obituary".
The Night King in the back takin notes.
Hi Indy
Informative video.
Now able to understand pykerete.
Thanks.
Thank you as always, glad you enjoyed this one
"Allow me to break the ice. "
I was thinking the other day, wouldnt pykecrete be useful for building structures in other planets? Say you build a pykecrete building on mars, its not going to melt
Maybe not Mars, because water is scarce there, but on Europa...
But where would you get the woodpulp from?
The Wiston Churchill intro is always the best, long version for some special occasion?
Barely even started the episode and I already love the new format
Thank you, glad you like (love!) it
I love your channel keep up the great stuff!!!
Thank you Oliver!!!
@@WorldWarTwo no problem 👍 can you do a special episode about Hitler's plans for after the war? I personally think that Germany stood no chance at winning WW2 but it's still interesting to know what the Nazi higher ranks thought the the new world order would look like if they had won through sheer dumb luck
10:08 " he will be frozen out of his work at combined operations"
I see what you did there. More seriously however how much of this sort of thing was effectively internal sabotage of the war effort, not by the axis powers but by vested interests.
Famously "empire building" within the Nazi regime contributed to it's end, this channel has highlighted the incredible lack of co-operation caused by to inter-service rivalry in Japan.
I'm certain that the UK saw this too. An example is the opposition to the "Dam busters" strategy in favour of the thousand bomber raids. Highly trained crews with unique weapons, effectively special forces tactics, did not generate huge contracts for plane manufacturers who, perhaps of necessity, had links to air force commands.
It's difficult to avoid tunnel vision when you are totally aware of the project you are working on whilst other projects remain restricted or even secret also work to inculcate pride in a service or a unit will often have the effect of creating "in group" thinking, internalising loyalty and creating rivalries. However deliberately putting aside group objectives for individual goals should not have been allowed to continue and actively rubbishing promising plans because they compete with your own ideas was sabotage and should have been actively punished !
Sorry to moan because Indy does mention this and I do like the video, but I think this topic gets glossed over when there is a lot to get through.
I didn't know how sad Pyke's end was but can only imagine the horror of hearing daily of the deaths of sailors around the world when you had shown how to build unsinkable ships !
I'm not sure I could have lived with that.
As you said, Indy does talk about this kind of stuff quite a lot. Just look at all the different direction people were pulling during Quebec.
Now I have seen everything lol can't wait for the D-day specials!
"frozen out"
love it
Hi. I know this story well and have been to and did a SCUBA dive on what's left. The prototype was built on Patricia Lake in Jasper National Park just above the town. Banff is often referenced for something in Jasper.
"Frozen out", very good.
Ah, yes! I saw this concept in the classic "Secret Allied Aircraft of WW2" documentary, where they envisioned it through CGI. So cool!
Saw that in high school, so thanks for bringing back that memory!
Thanks for watching, glad we could jog that memory for you
the bullet nearly hitting a VIP comes in MANY different versions, in one mountbatten is the near victim and pyke shoots the revolver, in another churchil is the victim etc.
Definitely it was Mountbatten the pistol firer, and the bullet hitting King's trouser leg (a ricochet from a low velocity weapon - it would not have done much damage). It's in Churchills' book and Mountbatten's diary - both published later.
One of the reasons which led us to putting the disclaimer at the start of the video.
thank you for this fantastic story
Thank you for watching, Léo
Indy, Mountbatten's first name is pronounced Louie, without the s. Like the French kings. 👍
There's more than a little Mr Freeze about this plan. He didn't propose testing it in Gotham City did he?
What's wrong, Herr Batmannen? Afraid of the ICE AGE?
Hmmm...after all, Otto Preminger (if that really was his name) DID play Mr. Freeze in the 1960s "Batman" series...
Reinforced ice was the most cool WWII technology which ended up unused.
Lord Louis said it, Pyke-crete, would make an enormous floating airfield impervious to bombing. To fill the north Atlantic gap in air defences. He hadn't been told of the ultra, long range B24 patrol bombers that were about to more cheaply, do that job.
Dystopian Wars makes one of these in 1/1200 scale called The Ice Maiden. It uses fictional Jules Verne science to keep chilled, and uses Tesla Coil weapons, but otherwise is fairly similar to the concept.
Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
Thank you!
A quite fantastic idea. But the fuel costs would be astronomical, and the refrigerators needed to freeze water in tropical waters would take its share.
Pity it failed, 'HMS Beaverpuke' does have a nice ring to it . . .
After the shots were fired, a ricochet bullet hit E King’s pantleg and that made bad tempered King very angry. Apparently, Churchill sent Dicky Mountbatten to his room with instructions not to return until it was time to leave the conference.
Very interesting guy.
You mention something about the technologies that are progressing due to the war that cause death, pain and suffering.
Let us not forget the advances made in technologies to save human lives also.
The first operational misson of a helicopter was for the evacuation of a wounded soldier.
Today CareFlight is a thing.
So many technologies were developed that have saved human lives well into the 21st Century.
All this talk of Pike brings to mind 'Dad's Army'. Timeghost should totally do a special on that. 😍
Stay tuned, Tim. Many more special episodes to come, and Dad's Army will definitely be covered.
@@WorldWarTwo Awesome! 😁
Also 'Galicia woman' - the fabled Eastern European who lived in 10 countries between 1914 and 1945 yet never left her hometown...
Ice Carrier enter the Pacific: Melting intensifies
I remember first reading about this project in the history/comedy book, "My Tank is Fight!" Definitely an interesting project, almost as interesting as the Soviet flying tank.
Aye, the dream of Pykrete falls apart, but the idea lives on in the many new forms & bastardizations of old-fashioned, eco-unfeasible concrete. Aircrete, for example, is a cheap, eco-friendly mixture of cement, foam and dishwashing detergent. It has great compression strength and only grows harder as it ages, but it doesn't have great tensile strength. However, when engineers stole a page from Pyke's book and added an outer layer of cement and fiber, they found that it was so strong (and impervious to things like moisture, fire and even earthquakes) that they didn't even need to build a supporting framework anymore.
They now inflate a huge balloon in the desired shape and size, spray it with a few inches of Aircrete, let it dry overnight, deflate and remove the balloon, and then spray both surfaces (inside and out) with the cement and fiber mixture, and voila! An impervious, nearly indestructible structure for pennies on the dollar compared with conventional building materials and techniques. Pyke would have loved this, I'm thinking. (Not sure if any Mountbattens have tried shooting at one of these structures, but hurricanes have given them their best shot, to no avail.)
www.domegaia.com/aircrete.html
He got *frozen* out? It was an impractical *Pyke* dream? How could you miss out on these opportunities?
Pyke is the kind of guy I'd aspire to. I dunno about the freezers (other than constructing this thing in a very cold region), but surely England or America had plenty of fence posts people would be willing to send through their wood chipper.
So bizarre that they wasted so much time and resources on aircraft carriers made of ice when the solution to closing mid-Atlantic gap and extend aircraft range was so simple. And already existed. Air to air refueling. Hell, by 1945 it was even in the planning to be used to extend the range of RAF's Tiger Force in the Far East so its Lancaster bombers could reach Japan.
@Retired Bore Germany didn't have any fighters operating in the deep Atlantic. A refueling aircraft flying west out of Ireland or east out of Newfoundland would have been safe.
This reminds me of Project Pigeon quite a bit, it would be cool to do a Newsflash on that too at some point
I notice that you pronounce Louis like the name Lewis, which I think it's pretty standard in America. However, in the UK the name is usually pronounced more like the French (Lou-ee). I was wondering if this is because Mountbatten used the anglicised pronunciation himself or if you are just using American pronunciation yourself?
The big thing is that it would have worked as advertised. It was just more expensive than intended.
A guy next to me in the airport's gate is watching your video lol I recognized the intro
Good taste!
Brilliant! Of course you are going to do the bat bomb in a future episode.
More small tidbit episodes like this one please!
We''ll try our best! There is a whole lot to cover though.
"... frozen out of his work... at 10:09. Lol
Pykrete is one of those fun, but completely impractical and useless materials. The dream of what could have been is great though.
Wait. Pykrete did indeed exist?! I always thought oversimplified made it up.
It exists!
The Quebec conference brings us to a great question: what if Mountbatten had accidentally killed admiral King with his ricochet bullet? How would have the war and History turned out differently than in our timeline?
I hope yall cover Bat Bomb - Project XRay as well as this project too!
I always wondered why Pykrete isn't used as a building material for artic conditions.