Desperate times call for desperate measures, and no time in history has been so desperate as the time when the most powerful nations in the world were bent on destroying each other at the time of World War II, and the Allies were running out of essential resources to build military and naval equipment.

In the North Atlantic, British fleets were bombing German U-boats, and Allied supply ships on their way across the ocean were intercepted and sunk by German U-boats, aircraft could protect the ships, but could not be deployed in the middle of the ocean without aircraft carriers, and these things are huge and need to huge quantities of steel to manufacture, which was in short supply, and what was required was a way for planes to refuel without overburdening already stressful resources.

A British scientist named Geoffrey Pike who worked at Joint Operations Headquarters as an advisor to the president, Lord Mountbatten, came up with a brilliant idea: to make the aircraft carrier come out of the ice, the ice is hard, it doesn't sink, but any damage can be easily repaired instantly once fresh bits of ice are frozen in place Pike, who had a penchant for outlandish ideas, suggested that a large portion of the arctic iceberg be cut into the ocean, and with its surface on land, the ice would serve as a landing platform, and if it could scrape the center, it would provide an ideal place to house planes.

Somehow, Pike managed to convince Lord Mountbatten of the idea, who was able to convince Winston Churchill that war could be won with snow, and Churchill gave the green light to the project (Project Habakkuk), in reference to a Bible verse, the aircraft carrier he had depicted. At 2,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and weighing more than 2 million tons, it will be a 40cm torpedo-resistant hull.

It was supposed to be equipped with 40 double turrets with many light anti-aircraft weapons, and the airstrip could accommodate up to 150 bombers or twin-engine fighter planes, the only major problem was the ice melt, but Jeffrey Pike had a solution for that too, the system The massive refrigerant, which consists of an intricate network of tubes, pumps cryogenic refrigerant gas throughout the vessel to keep the ice from melting.

A 60-foot, 1,000-ton prototype was quickly built on Patricia Lake in the Canadian Rockies, and a single-horsepower cooling system kept the ship cool enough to last all summer months, and during testing, some new problems arose, though the ice is hard However, it is brittle, and besides, the ice deforms under pressure.

A large vessel like the Habakkuk would also succumb under its weight, but there was a new opportunity. Two researchers at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, New York, have already investigated and discovered that if a pump of wood or sawdust is mixed with water and frozen, the resulting material is fourteen times stronger than ice. Ordinary, tougher than concrete.

Experiments showed that this new material was highly resistant to pressure, chipping, and even bullets, and could be shaped like wood. An insulating shell of wet wood pulp formed on its surface that protected the inside from melting. The wonder substance was called pykrete, in honor of Pyke, and the miracle substance was exactly what he needed. To him Jeffrey Pike for the success of his project and rushed designs and plans to build an aircraft carrier.

It was determined that each ship needed 300,000 tons of pulp, 25,000 tons of insulating boards, 35,000 tons of timber, and 10,000 tons of steel, the original cost being £700,000, but there was a problem of shortages. The timber project was eventually canceled and more practical steps were taken, such as the establishment of airports in the Azores.

This made it easier to see ships in the Atlantic, adding larger fuel tanks to British planes to extend patrol times over the Atlantic, and today, the remains of the project lie at the bottom of Patricia Lake in Alberta, Canada, where the prototype was tested.