An iceberg seen near Greenland, circa 2023. Natural icebergs are inherently unsuitable to position permanent human structures on, leading the British to attempt to design an alternative. (Shutterstock/Michal Balada)

“Project Habakkuk”: Why the British Couldn’t Make an Aircraft Carrier from Ice

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“Pykrete” is an intriguing material—and while it was ultimately deemed unsuitable for military purposes in World War II, it is easy to make at home and experiment with.

World War II was the largest land war in human history, but it also included the most far-flung naval campaigns ever fought. Taken independently, World War II in Europe and the Pacific War would each still rank as history’s two largest and most complex naval wars by a wide margin.

Projecting power beyond one’s immediate sphere of influence has always been among the most resource-intensive endeavors that nations face. That job has historically fallen to navies, though long-range airpower has eased some of that burden. Even so, strategic aircraft based abroad still rely on naval power for their logistics. This problem’s persistent difficulty is sometimes illustrated by the means by which planners consider actually achieving it. And in World War II, a variety of factors led the Allied powers to consider a fascinating, yet ultimately ludicrous, new way to project airpower in the Atlantic: building new aircraft carriers out of a special mixture of ultra-strong, heat-resistance ice.

The “Atlantic Air Gap”: Where Allied Planes Couldn’t Reach U-Boats

Aircraft carriers allowed the United States and Japan to each project air power across the Pacific Ocean in the early stages of World War II. The pivotal battle of the Pacific War, the Battle of Midway, was fought entirely between aircraft carriers, with no American or Japanese surface vessels ever making contact with each other. US aircraft carriers continued to lead the US across the Pacific, until suitable island bases could be acquired from which to stage the B-29 heavy bomber against the Japanese Home Islands. Even with those bases, naval tactical air was a major factor until war’s end, and remains so today.

The Atlantic Campaign, however, was different. It was primarily a commerce war, with Germany employing U-boats (and the very occasional surface raider) to disrupt the logistical lines from North America to the British isles. Convoy tactics and escort ships like destroyers and frigates played a major role in protecting........

© The National Interest