military@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker) (04/29/89)
From: sun!portal!cup.portal.com!mmm
Lest anyone think the U.S. government has a monopoly on stupidity,
consider this story about Canadian progress in warship technology
(quoted from PIECES OF THE ACTION by Vannevar Bush):
"One of his [Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke] proposals was for an ice island,
to be called "Habakkuk" to float in the Atlantic as a way station for
transatlantic planes and a home base for planes hunting submarines.
There were many wild ideas of this sort about, but this one took an
unusual course.
The story as quoted from a journalist, Wilfrid Eggleston, in his
account of the Canadian war effort [SCIENTISTS AT WAR], goes as follows:
'An inventor with a goatee beard produced a hundred page report on a
scheme called Habakkuk, and presented it to Lord Mountbatten, Chief of
the Combined Operations. Mountbatten sat up in bed until noon reading
it.' I doubt if Mountbatten ever stayed in bed that long at any time
during the war, but he certainly bought the scheme, hook, line, and
sinker. Shortly thereafter Churchill also became convinced and, in
characteristic language, sent a memo to the Chiefs of Staff Committee
for urgent action. I cannot discover that there was ever a favorable
report on the scheme from competent engineers anywhere. But Churchill
in his memo passed on some bright ideas of his own as to how an island
could be made by cutting a piece from an ice floe in the Arctic and fitting
it with propulsion equipment, antiaircraft defense, and so on.
I had heard that such a scheme was alive, and some of the details as it
began to take form. It was, as Eggleston remarks, "audacious and unorthodox."
When I discussed it with engineers in O.S.R.D., as I was bound to do if I
wanted to avoid surprise, they evidently thought I had some obscure reason for
testing their hardheadedness. The plan was to involve a block of ice,
reinforced with wood splints or straw, 2000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and
200 feet thick. This latter dimension was a minimum. The block really
should be much thicker, for an elevation of thirty feet or so above the
surface would hardly prevent storm waves from washing over it. As the plan
developed, it included diesel engines to propel the ice block, a refrigerating
plant aboard to keep the ice frozen in the warm waters of the Atlantic,
workshops, living quarters, etc. Submarines could knock chips off the thing
with torpedoes, but presumably they could be frozen back on.
I knew I was bound to hear of this confection officially, although not
in the manner in which notification actually occurred, and I knew this
notification could cause trouble. So I talked to some of my friends in the
Navy. They had long considered an island for aircraft, but not an island
made of ice. Their plan involved a steel structure with long cylindrical
floatation members so that its platform would be well above the waves, but
they had sidetracked the plan on the ground that even such a structure would
be too vunerable. I told them they had better get it out of the files and
polish it up as they might need it.
The next thing I heard about Habakkuk was when Mountbatten and Pyke
walked into my office. They had evidently just come from the White House.
There was no presentation of a proposal, no request that O.S.R.D. should
study one and advise on it. Rather, Pyke told me the plan was approved
and just what O.S.R.D. was now to do about it. Mountbatten looked
embarrassed but not nearly enough so. I listened. Then I told Pyke,
no doubt with some emphasis, that I took orders from the President of the
United States and from no one else, and that ended the interview. I never
had any word on the subject through the very active channels which we had
with British science.
As I expected, it was not long before the President brought it up.
He did so in the casual way in which he usually asked me about all sorts
of things, and wanted to know what I thought of the idea of an ice island.
I told him, "I think it is bunk. If we want an island, the Navy has a far
better idea for one." He never mentioned it again. He may have consulted the
Navy, but I doubt it.
These two short interviews probably spared this country the waste of a
million man-hours of work by scientists, engineers, and technicians who had
much more realistic things to do. The Canadians went ahead with the program.
The National Research Council at Ottawa took it on. "The order stemmed from
the highest authority, its temper was mandatory, and as a result a tremendous
flurry of activity got under way in Canada," as Eggleston tells it. Much of
the effort of some of Canada's most able scientists and engineers was thus
used. The scheme was, of course, ultimately judged to be impractical. One
could build a good aircraft carrier for the cost of a Habakkuk and it would
not melt."
For more information, see ENGINEERS' DREAMS by Willy Ley. That book also
discusses Armstrong's proposal for islands floating on metal pontoons,
which is probably the Navy design referred to above.
Pyke's other great idea spawned Project Weasel, which resulted in the
development of what is now called the "snowmobile". The O.S.R.D. [Office
of Scientific Research and Development, of which Bush was head] did get
involved with this one. Pyke's proposal was for a vehicle which would
run on a pair of motor-drived Archimedean screws. This didn't work.
Bush put Palmer Putnam on the project, and he invented a mechanism based
on mini-Caterpillar treads. I saw a device similar to the original Pyke
idea last year when those whales were trapped in the ice up in Alaska.
Exxon has a small ice breaker which climbs up onto the ice using a pair
of Archimedean screws, then breaks through the ice using its own weight.hogg@db.toronto.edu (John Hogg) (05/03/89)
From: John Hogg <hogg@db.toronto.edu> In article <6074@cbnews.ATT.COM> sun!portal!cup.portal.com!mmm writes: >Lest anyone think the U.S. government has a monopoly on stupidity, >consider this story about Canadian progress in warship technology >(quoted from PIECES OF THE ACTION by Vannevar Bush): > >"One of his [Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke] proposals was for an ice island, >to be called "Habakkuk" to float in the Atlantic as a way station for >transatlantic planes and a home base for planes hunting submarines. >There were many wild ideas of this sort about, but this one took an >unusual course. [...] The plan was to involve a block of ice, >reinforced with wood splints or straw, 2000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and >200 feet thick. [...] The Canadians went ahead with the program. >The National Research Council at Ottawa took it on. [...] Much of >the effort of some of Canada's most able scientists and engineers was thus >used. The scheme was, of course, ultimately judged to be impractical. One >could build a good aircraft carrier for the cost of a Habakkuk and it would >not melt." > >Pyke's other great idea spawned Project Weasel, which resulted in the >development of what is now called the "snowmobile". [...] While Canadian stupidity at times ranks up there with the best (e.g., the implementation of the defence spending cuts announced in the recent Budget) I have to take issue with the previous posting for two reasons: 1) Habakkuk wasn't really Canadian, and 2) it was not an example of stupidity, merely a case of good technology superseded by advances in another area. With respect to point 1), Pyke was British. He seems to have been a classic eccentric genius; for instance, among his more successful inventions was the floating bridge known as ``Swiss Roll''. A much more sympathetic view of his life and contributions is given in ``Secret Weapons of WWII'', Bantam Books (author unknown); he probably deserves a better place in history. The reference to the NRC is interesting. I was unaware that any appreciable amount of work on Habakkuk had actually taken place in this country; this was merely the logical place to build ice islands, since we have inlets, wood pulp, and (for part of the year) an appropriate climate. It's a pity that we didn't do more work on this, since we could use the knowledge. On to point 2). First, the rationale for Habakkuk should be understood. It was never intended as a war*ship*. At the time, Atlantic convoys suffered from an absence of air cover in mid-ocean, due to inadequate aircraft range. To Pyke, the obvious answer was to build an island on which to place an airbase. He may have had this idea in mind for some time, since it was also envisaged as a refueling field for commercial transatlantic flight. Given that an island was needed, ice was an excellent choice of construction material. It is very cheap---Bush notwithstanding, a steel floating island will not form itself. Since the construction material is lighter than water, no amount of enemy action will sink it. Of course, ice is brittle, and could be blown into pieces. One of Pyke's contributions was to point out that ice strengthened with wood pulp became vastly stronger. (Mild steel rebar would also work, but apart from cost, it has the nasty property of melting the ice underneath it until it eventually falls out the bottom.) After attributes of cheap construction, graceful degradation, easy repair, and simple unsinkability are taken into account, the cost of cooling begins to look quite reasonable. What really did in Habakkuk was aeronautical engineering. By the time that it was recognized as a good solution to a sticky problem, the problem was on the way out. Better aircraft were able to provide air cover the whole way across the Atlantic, and the U-boat threat was decreasing in any case. So Habakkuk never had a chance to prove its worth. I'm surprised that this technology has never surfaced anywhere else, though. Wood pulp reinforcement should be useful for ice roads and bridges. At present, we're importing our leading edge ice bridge technology from the Soviet Union. Perhaps we could further develop pulp reinforcement, and sell some knowhow back to them? --- John Hogg hogg@csri.utoronto.ca Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto (whose ice driving experience is fairly limited.)
howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz) (05/12/89)
From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz) In article <6074@cbnews.ATT.COM>, military@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker) writes: > > > From: sun!portal!cup.portal.com!mmm > Lest anyone think the U.S. government has a monopoly on stupidity, > consider this story about Canadian progress in warship technology > (quoted from PIECES OF THE ACTION by Vannevar Bush): Remember, though, that Vannevar Bush, in _Modern Arms and Free Men_ and in congressional testimony, insisted, in 1947, that nuclear-armed ballistic missiles were impossible! -- howard@cos.com OR {uunet, decuac, sun!sundc, hadron, hqda-ai}!cos!howard (703) 883-2812 [W] (703) 998-5017 [H] DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Corporation for Open Systems, its members, or any standards body.