Project Habbakuk: Britain's attempt to build an ice warship
Interesting, I hadn&#x27;t known remnants survived in the lake.<p>It draws 2 of 3 wrong reasons why it didn&#x27;t go ahead though.<p>Not at all Iceland, that was long before, but leasing the Azores airbases in 43 made the biggest difference to the Atlantic Gap (U boat alley as this article calls it). The Atlantic Gap was <i>massive[1].</i> Iceland offered its use to the US in 41 after the British invasion in 1940 following the German occupation of Denmark (Iceland was then Danish). Operation Fork if you want that rabbit hole[2]. :)<p>Centimetric radar made a big difference - thanks to the well known cavity magnetron story, but Bomber Command was pushing for priority, and there were modifications needed for it to work on the flying boats (ASV IIIC). So for Coastal Command initially on Wellington and Liberator only, with Coastal not coming on stream as soon as Bomber Command. Don&#x27;t think it took too long to get to the boats though.<p>For the British side of the Atlantic, VLR (Very long range) Liberators were already available, and had been some time, but in limited numbers. They were distributed between the three Commands that wanted them (Bomber, Coastal and Transport). VLR Liberators were compromised from a fighting point of view (removed some or all turrets, armour and bomb bay space for the extra fuel tanks). Catalinas, Wellingtons and especially Sunderlands did more action against subs, despite more limited range. Sunderlands managed to increase range by about 40% with additional and temporary tanks - albeit pushing the III to its absolute limit. I think they managed to get about 2,600m from a III in the end, including the unofficial drop tanks, but that was brutal on engines. The V solved that with heavily uprated engines. Catalinas had very little space for extra fuel without compromising already limited armament.<p>Don&#x27;t know much about anti sub operations the US side. Obviously they&#x27;d be far more Liberator, and probably Catalina heavy. :)<p>Back to Habbakuk. The scale made it faintly absurd, even though technically viable. The amount of steel and engineering needed was equivalent to a couple, perhaps more, conventional carriers.<p>See Wikipedia&#x27;s list of how it ended: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Project_Habakkuk#End_of_project" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Project_Habakkuk#End_of_projec...</a><p>[1] 1941 Atlantic Gap: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mid-Atlantic_gap#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:The_battle_of_the_Atlantic_1941_map.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mid-Atlantic_gap#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:T...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Invasion_of_Iceland" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Invasion_of_Iceland</a>