Project Habakkuk

[Orionblamblam]

Re: Habakkuk: Is it more American or British design?

I can't see the US building the Habakkuk. By the end of the war the US was quite good at building quite good steel aircraft carriers; the US was also quite good at taking out the U-Boats from the air. And at the end of the war aircraft such as the B-35 and B-36 were on the horizon capable of carpet bombing Germany from the CONUS. The US didn't *need* the Habakkuk.

The alternate history would have to be quite remarkably different for the US to go ahead with this. The Germans succeed in their invasion of the USSR, say, taking out the Soviets by the end of 1942 and then devoting all their effort to trouncing the Brits by, say, the end of 1943. If the Germans only had to devote a trivial percentage of their effort to the USSR, then *maybe* having a floating, nigh invulnerable way station in the Atlantic might've made some sort of sense.

 

[Wingknut]

A bit more on 'Habakkuk':
http://osnetdaily.com/2015/05/the-colossus-that-never-was-the-amazing-story-of-a-giant-wwii-aircraft-carrier-made-of-ice/

WARSHIP International (vol. 41, No. 3, September 2006), see http://www.kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=781

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/icyhusky/media/HMS%20Habakkuk%20model%20project/scan-2.jpg.html

 

[Wingknut]

Hi folks,
Just further to the above: I link to the first of these images in my last post, but here are three drawings from the model Habakkuk project:
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/icyhusky/media/HMS%20Habakkuk%20model%20project/scan-2.jpg.html
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/icyhusky/media/HMS%20Habakkuk%20model%20project/scan0001.jpg.html
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/icyhusky/media/HMS%20Habakkuk%20model%20project/scan0002.jpg.html
File-names in the attached are of course my own so apologies for any inaccuracies / mistakes.
Anyway if this stuff is all old news or otherwise unhelpful, let me know and I'll remove it.
Thanks, 'Wingknut'.

 

[paulreilly]

Re: Habakkuk: Is it more American or British design?

There's not much on Pyke or Hababbuk on the internet, Here's a link to a short film about him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Ngv5nfG44

 

[Grey Havoc]

In addition, or alternatively, to the maritime equipped 'Mossies', the basic aircraft compliment of the 2000ft 'Bergship' was also intended to include De Havilland Sea Hornets. The Spitfires would actually have been Seafires. (World of Warships magazine, March 2020 edition)

 

[Firefinder]

Found and explain once again did an interesting video of this with pretty models.

View: https://youtu.be/g3EJ9Jl7CCw?si=QI6Wkh7BMqkDNbr5


Of particular interest to me is the mobile port mention for ship resupply and repairs.

 

[publiusr]

It'sd be nice to see icebergs modified so as to bring water to deserts...

 

[Foo Fighter]

No need to tow icebergs mate. https://www.thenationalnews.com/fut...ing-water-from-desert-air-no-longer-a-mirage/

 

[A51dude]

Wish there was a good book on this project. It's a story that begs to be told.

Actually, there is. The book is titled "The Canadian Habbakuk Project" by Lorne W. Gold. It is the ULTIMATE reference for learning how a Habakkuk vessel could have been built, the history of Project Habakkuk, how the Habakkuk prototype was built on Patricia Lake near Jasper in Alberta, and information on testing of blocks of ice and pykrete. The whole book is like a scientific/engineering journal. I have a copy at home. No other website, Youtube video, or anything else comes close to the information that this book has. The information the book has comes directly from the Canadian National Research Council and/or other Canadian and British military and government sources. Its definately worth a read.

 

[A51dude]

Found and explain once again did an interesting video of this with pretty models.

View: https://youtu.be/g3EJ9Jl7CCw?si=QI6Wkh7BMqkDNbr5


Of particular interest to me is the mobile port mention for ship resupply and repairs.

I saw that video. And I don't put that much stock (faith) in it or any other video about Project Habakkuk.
I've seen my fair share of videos on Project Habakkuk and all I have to say about them is that I find most of them to be nothing more than sensationalist garbage. Just people looking to get their 15 minutes of fame reporting about something they saw or liked and maybe trying to make some $$$ from their video. Sorry to sound so "disgruntled", folks. But I'm a person who tends to prefer "serious research" on the Habakkuk. I prefer reading books and/or information from "official" government or military sources if I can find it which isn't easy.
Some Habakkuk videos might seem nice and do "some" good reporting. But a lot of them tend to exaggerate some of their claims and not do enough fact checking.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

The production plan for Habakkuk was:

8,000 men working to produce the necessary Pykrete blocks over an 8 month period.

The production plant would cover 100 acres and consist of:

A water system delivering 30 million gallons per day
An electric plant producing 150,000 kw
40,000 tons of specialized industrial machinery including:
30 x 2,500 HP pulp grinders
120 x 200 ton ammonia compressors
120 x 70,000 cfm industrial fans
1000 miles + of 1.25" steel pipe
A rail system using flat cars to build the blocks on and transport them to the ship construction site.

An estimated total of 300,000 tons of wood pulp and 1 million gallons of freshwater a day would be required.

The estimated cost of the plant was $10 million.

Two construction sites were proposed having the necessary low temperatures and a deep enough harbor to float the ship:

Cornerbrook Newfoundland and Seven Islands Bay Quebec.

In: Warship number 18, April 1981

Warship. No. 18 April 1981 by Preston, Antony [ed.]: Very Good (1981) First Edition. | Barter Books Ltd

ISBN: 9780851772103 - First Edition. - Soft cover - Conway Maritime Press Ltd, London - 1981 - Condition: Very Good - VG : in very good condition without dust jacket as issued. 240mm x 190mm (9" x 7"). 64pp. Illustrated laminated card cover - Warship. No. 18 April 1981

www.abebooks.com

 

[Tzoli]

And not one but 12 was considered to be built if I remember correctly and likely 4-5 per Ocean (Atlantic and Pacific with 1-2 in reserve) This would provide the necessary air coverage of convoys.

 

[CJGibson]

I look at a proposal to use Habakkuk as a base for Tiger Force in They Also Serve.

Chris

 

[A51dude]

The production plan for Habakkuk was:

8,000 men working to produce the necessary Pykrete blocks over an 8 month period.

The production plant would cover 100 acres and consist of:

A water system delivering 30 million gallons per day
An electric plant producing 150,000 kw
40,000 tons of specialized industrial machinery including:
30 x 2,500 HP pulp grinders
120 x 200 ton ammonia compressors
120 x 70,000 cfm industrial fans
1000 miles + of 1.25" steel pipe
A rail system using flat cars to build the blocks on and transport them to the ship construction site.

An estimated total of 300,000 tons of wood pulp and 1 million gallons of freshwater a day would be required.

The estimated cost of the plant was $10 million.

Two construction sites were proposed having the necessary low temperatures and a deep enough harbor to float the ship:

Cornerbrook Newfoundland and Seven Islands Bay Quebec.

In: Warship number 18, April 1981

Warship. No. 18 April 1981 by Preston, Antony [ed.]: Very Good (1981) First Edition. | Barter Books Ltd

ISBN: 9780851772103 - First Edition. - Soft cover - Conway Maritime Press Ltd, London - 1981 - Condition: Very Good - VG : in very good condition without dust jacket as issued. 240mm x 190mm (9" x 7"). 64pp. Illustrated laminated card cover - Warship. No. 18 April 1981

www.abebooks.com

I see your statistics and I'll raise you mine.
I wrote some data specification sheets of my own and posted them in Post # 164 on Page 11 of my 1/350 scale Habakkuk model thread which is located here:
https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=51061.150
The information from Attachments A & B comes directly from "The Canadian Habbakuk Project" book by Lorne W. Gold.

 

[publiusr]

I wonder if glaciers could be stabilized if mixed with other materials.

 

[Graham1973]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-8ppT7TYrg

 

[A_Random_Guy]

And not one but 12 was considered to be built if I remember correctly and likely 4-5 per Ocean (Atlantic and Pacific with 1-2 in reserve) This would provide the necessary air coverage of convoys.

Do you remember where you saw that or any other details of it?

 

[Tzoli]

Do you remember where you saw that or any other details of it?

Will have to check

 

[JJMM]

Two years ago I wanted to draw to understand the construction and assembly of the famous "iceberg carrier" HMS Habakkuk with 2 internal cross sections.
This is what it looks like without more detailed information in the archives, just a simple search on the Internet.
All comparison and aircraft drawings are also my own work.

 

[PMN1]

What dictated the size at 2,000ft x 300ft?

 

[JJMM]

The main objective was to counter the threat of German submarines (U-boats) in the Atlantic, which were targeting Allied convoys.
At that time, land-based aircraft had a limited range, leaving a vast area of the Atlantic without aerial coverage.
A giant aircraft carrier capable of moving in the middle of the Atlantic was therefore considered to fill this gap. To be effective, the aircraft carrier had to be able to carry a large number of aircraft and have a sufficiently long runway.
In addition, its large size would have allowed for interesting stability and, in my opinion, to maintain a fairly low temperature, like giant icebergs, but with low maneuverability.

 

[Tzoli]

Also the unsinkability. A few meter thick pycrete could easily resist the expositions of torpedoes and mines.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

One concern, and I'm not sure the designers would have recognized it at the time, was at that length, the bending moment of the vessel would be affected by the curvature of the Earth. Large supertankers today are designed to deal with this issue, I'm not sure the Habakkuk was. The result might be that the ship when launched and out to sea starts to break apart from the combination of various bending moments on the hull like wave action and gravity.

 

[CJGibson]

Well, you learn something new every day.
Wouldn't the earth's curvature be about 6cm over the length of a ULCC? Which might be a problem for tunneling eg LHC not so much at sea.

Chris
(I checked the calendar before posting)

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Well, you learn something new every day.
Wouldn't the earth's curvature be about 6cm over the length of a ULCC? Which might be a problem for tunneling eg LHC not so much at sea.

Chris
(I checked the calendar before posting)

A 2000-foot-long ship is at the lower end of this problem, but it could be a problem. Wave length in the Atlantic would also have to be considered. The distance between waves and their height could affect the way the ship's girder is supported, resulting in bending moments that exceed the hull's strength.

 

[CJGibson]

All versions of Habakkuk would pretty much be semi-submersibles as at least one of them had a draught of 150ft. I can't see that moving much in a Pacific swell or even a freak wave.

I suspect the stability of Habakkuks was examined before the Air Staff considered flying Lincolns from them. I'll have a look in the file.

Chris

PS Have experienced two freak waves on semi-submersible vessels and in one instance we heeled over to about 30 degrees and lost the Marisat dome amongst other items.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Well, you learn something new every day.
Wouldn't the earth's curvature be about 6cm over the length of a ULCC? Which might be a problem for tunneling eg LHC not so much at sea.

Chris
(I checked the calendar before posting)

It would come out to about 3.5cm over the length of a ship I was intimately familiar with. As that was the order of magnitude of the measurements I was making, I'd have noticed.

All versions of Habakkuk would pretty much be semi-submersibles as at least one of them had a draught of 150ft. I can't see that moving much in a Pacific swell or even a freak wave.

Exceptionally deep draught, but not isolated from motions the way a semisubmersible is as they'd have full waterplanes. Huge mass which would go a long way to damping motions, but also huge forces... I'd be very worried about the ice cracking.

 

[Hood]

How strong was Pykrete? Beyond Mountbatten's famous bullet trick, was it actually that stable under tensile stress?

 

[Firefinder]

How strong was Pykrete? Beyond Mountbatten's famous bullet trick, was it actually that stable under tensile stress?

Probably not that stable.

However, comma.

Considering most sources put the walls and bottom of the design at over 40 foot thick...

Its likely had enough meat for tensile strength issues to not be a problem.

 

[JJMM]

Truly interesting discussion!
Assuming the weight and draft are sufficient to stabilize this aircraft carrier, which I strongly doubt, the sea is the strongest, a hull breach was likely. Insurmountable constraints must be also cited:
- there would have been major problems with refueling at sea with fuel, gasoline and oil, with supplies, spare parts, wounded and personnel, as there was no docking solution other than transfer alongside.
- the ports of call would have needed immense quays and docking with barges because of the propulsion pods.
- there was no dry dock with sufficient dimensions for dry docking and hull cleaning or pod maintenance.
- with its low speed and facing the wind, would it really have been possible to launch loaded Vickers Wellingtons without catapults?
I think all this was not mentioned or studied since the abandonment was quickly announced...

 

[EwenS]

The whole initial idea was not perhaps as badly researched as might be supposed.

Few points from the Warship 18 article by William J Wallace PhD published back in 1981.

Pyke's proposal handed to Mountbatten on 23 Sept 1942 ran to 100 pages. He was proposing its use for aircraft up to B-24 size. As for the use of ice:-

"The suggestion was not as far-fetched as it might first appear, for Pyke had carefully researched the subject. Ice was difficult to break up with explosives (as had been shown in attempts to destroy icebergs and ice jams), very resistant to gunfire and direct shelling from larger naval guns (as the US Coast Guard and Ice Patrol experiments in 1925 had proven), large icebergs melted slowly and even more slowly when insulated, and best of all, ice could not be sunk. He included calculations showing it was not out of the question to construct A vessel of 1000ft length, 200ft width and 50ft draught. As early as 1884, H Hertz had pointed out that large ice-floes had remarkable sustaining power which polar explorers, such as Amundsen, would later take advantage of. Aircraft operations from ice floes began in June 1923 when a single-engined Curtiss equipped with skis was lowered on to the ice and took off. Amundsen in his polar explorations, employed two Dornier Wal flying boats which took off from snow-covered ice. However, it was the Russian polar pilot M S Babushkin who, as early as 1926, was landing regularly on ice floes and who, in 1928, while helping to locate and subsequently rescue survivors from the wreck of the dirigible Italia in his single engine YU-13 monoplane made no fewer than fifteen landings in bad conditions, in a space measuring only 200 x 550ft"

And he recognised at that point that ice alone might not be enough and that some kind of building material might need incorporated. That proved to be true, leading to the development of "Pykrete" in 1943 incorporating wood pulp.

Once the design study was authorised it was discovered that little had been published about the use of ice or sea ice in a structural way. From that the following problems needed to be solved in the production of a "bergship".

1. Cost and speed of construction on a large scale basis, both by natural and artificial refrigeration.
2. The best method of construction and launching
3. The cheapest method of reinforcement
4. The most readily available and reliable thermal insulation
5. The kind of engine required and how it would be attached
6. Methods of assisted aircraft take-off and arresting.

From that came theoretical and practical studies, including a 1/50 scale model weighing 1,100 tons complete with insulation built in winter 1942/43 in Canada.

By April 1943 the number of types of vessel under consideration had grown to 6:-

1. A relay airbase preferably 3,000ft long for long range aircraft
2. An aircraft carrier approx 2,000ft in length for short range AS patrols
3. An advance fighter base of between 1250 & 1500ft
4. A cargo ship
5. An oil tanker
6. A combination of 4 & 5.

The Admiralty provided best estimates of wave heights (little hard data was available on these in WW2). It was thought Habakkuk should be able to withstand waves of 50ft in the Atlantic & 65ft in the Pacific. Freeboard needed to be at least 50ft.

The final design drawn up in summer 1943 had the following characteristics

Length 2,000ft
Beam 300ft
Draught 150ft
Freeboard 50ft
Displacement 1,800,000 tons
Speed 7+ knots from 40,000hp machinery consisting of 20+ electric motors
Capacity 200 Spitfires or 100 Mosquito
Crew 3,590.


All the workshops, crew spaces, hangars , machinery compartments etc would occupy a 60ft wide series of compartments along the centre line of the vessel, with 80ft honeycomb structures outboard and then 40ft of Pykrete outboard of that. Outboard of that was a 9in thick insulation layer made of a complex composite material, itself comprising 27 layers. There was also 40ft of Pykrete above and below that structure.

None of the diagrams show hangar space or lifts however. And note the aircraft types involved. Nothing bigger than a Mosquito with its 54ft wingspan, able to fit that 60ft centre section. So clearly the role for Habakkuk had moved away from providing Atlantic AS cover, to being more of an aviation assault platform, to support amphibious landings.

Construction proved difficult as formation of Pykrete blocks needed low ( -15°) temperatures and it was found they had to be smaller than originally thought. Pykrete was also found to be subject to plastic deformation (creep) and so the vessel would sag under it's own weight. By controlling the manufacturing temps and using Canadian Spruce pulp instead of Scots Pine it was found that the creep would stop after an initial sagging period of several weeks.

Another problem was construction location. Cold enough and big enough but reasonably close to civilisation. Cornerbrook, Newfoundland and Seven Islands Bay, Quebec were considered the most suitable. In the Pacific, Alaska was too remote and Puget Sound too warm.

The article also has a description of how the Pykrete blocks were to be manufactured and cooled. The plant was expected to cost $10 million, the bare hull $50m and another $10m to complete.

Initially in spring 1943 it was thought Habakkuk might complete in mid-summer 1944, quickly revised to end of summer 1945. The whole venture was canned in late 1943, not because of any of the problems of construction, finance or manpower. It was simply superseded by events. Airfields on places like the Azores and Ascension Island made transatlantic ferrying easier and island hopping in the Pacific made Habakkuk redundant. And of course longer ranged land based aircraft were becoming available in larger numbers as well as escort carriers and MAC ships.

Apparently there was a later plan for a large ferro concrete carrier type vessel (no details given).

As for the launch question, it probably disappeared with the seeming change of role. But bear in mind the RAE had experimented successfully in the early war period with catapulting aircraft up to the size of the Manchester bomber. And if all else failed there was always RATOG, assuming you could keep the deck cool enough!

 

[JJMM]

OK, I haven't found and therefore haven't read all the literature about this project, but it would have been complicated to manage at sea anyway.
We can also note the dazzling progress of aircraft between 1941 and 1945, their range and their specialization, such as anti-submarine warfare, then the arrival of jet aircraft...

 

[skylancer-3441]

Two years ago I wanted to draw to understand the construction and assembly of the famous "iceberg carrier" HMS Habakkuk with 2 internal cross sections.
This is what it looks like without more detailed information in the archives, just a simple search on the Internet.
All comparison and aircraft drawings are also my own work.

Needs to take this into account:

All the workshops, crew spaces, hangars , machinery compartments etc would occupy a 60ft wide series of compartments along the centre line of the vessel, with 80ft honeycomb structures outboard

Honeycomb structure was supposed to be filling all that space, where all hangars are depicted in every cross-section which repeats guess made for Illustrated London News.

Person attempting to make a scalemodel of Habakkuk on whatifmodellers described it in this post :

Contrary to popular belief, the interior design of the Habakkuk vessel was not the following as shown in the second picture below as well as in other media sources.
The illustration (second picture below) is from an article in the Illustrated London News, Pgs. 14 and 15, Saturday, March 2, 1946, No.3071, Vol. 115 or 118?
This interior illustration of a Habakkuk vessel design was most likely based on a press release that was given to the public and media in 1946 by Canadian and/or British government and military figures. The interior illustration is wrong in that it shows upper and lower port & starboard aircraft hangars on either side of the central crew and engineering levels.
As has been shown in other schematics in this thread, the left & right areas on either side of the center crew and engineering areas were to be filled with a "resin block construction" mainly consisting of regular ice with possible addition of other non-pykrete materials. According to The Canadian Habbakuk Project book by Lorne W. Gold, the ice block construction used in the areas on either side of the central crew area was to be for mainly buoyancy (and/or structural integrity) issues. The following describes more about the use of ice from the book:

"Initial studies were based on the use of a pykrete shell (hull) with inner supporting columns and bulkheads made of either concrete or pykrete. However, the resulting designs did not comply with condition B (The vessel to be unsinkable with all compartments flooded.). When all compartments were flooded, a vessel with the inner structure of concrete would definately sink. Under similar conditions, the all-pykrete vessel would lie so low in the water as to render it useless. To overcome this difficulty, it was decided to use a lightweight non-absorbent filling material in the interior of the vessel so that the necessary buoyant effect could be obtained and the craft still remain unsinkable. The general outline of the proposed design is shown in Figure 1 (See the last picture below.). It consists essentially of an outer pykrete shell supported internally by hollow reinforced concrete columns and with spaces between columns filled with a suitable material weighing not more than 25 lbs per cubic foot. Ice containing at least 60% air bubbles or voids has been proposed for this material."

NOTE: Bubble or void ice refers to blocks of regular ice (Not pykrete) that have air bubbles inside of them or where the blocks of ice are more like a hollow brick of sorts.

(Quoted text changed by me, only in places where it refers to order of pictures, as I've decided to repost only 3 pictures directly connected to that question, out of 6 in the original post which described other things as well)

(It's interesting, how small is internal useful space in that version of Habakkuk hull depicted on last picture)