By now our readers know that in The Maier-Files – Book 1 – The Initiation flying saucers (haunebus) appear (for those who didn’t: you can buy the comic here). And the “Wunderwaffen” indeed are an essential part of the story, just as they are an essential part of lots of “conspiracy theories” concerning the escape routes of national-socialists after the Second World War. But not only national-socialists were working on so called wonder weapons. The Brits, amongst others, had some strange plans of their own. One of them was worked on in Project Habbakuk.
The idea was one of a certain Geoffrey Pike, who worked for the British Combined Operations Headquarters and was considered a genius by Lord Mountbatten, leader of that organization. Goal was – the U-boat war was still very active – solving the problem of invasions from the sea or Atlantic convoys that couldn’t be covered by airplanes. Steel and aluminum were scarce and needed for other goals. Ice however could be manufactured with about one percent of the energy needed for producing the same amount of steel and so ice became the solution for Pyke. His “bergship” (“berg” is derived from “iceberg”, which is originally derived from the Dutch word “ijsberg”) would consist of a, natural or artificial, ice mass flatted on top and hollowed to serve as an aircraft-carrier.
Mountbatten liked the idea and passed it on to Churchill, who liked it too. At the start of 1942 Pyke brought in a specialist to decide on whether an icefloat big enough and strong enough to endure circumstances in the Atlantic could be build in a reasonable span of time. The specialist said he’d better forget about a natural iceberg, because those have not enough surface above water to build an airstrip on it and tend to roll over rather suddenly. The project would have been dismissed if “pykrete” wasn’t invented by then, a mixture of 86 percent water and 14 percent sawdust much stronger than regular ice, melting much slower and unsinkable.
We spare you the technical details, but it was decided that a scale model would be build in Jasper National Park in Canada. It measured 18 meters by 9 meters, weighed a 1000 tons and was kept frozen by a one horsepower motor. The Canadians were sure they could build the first real “bergship” by 1944 and they had the necessary material to do so. But soon problems emerged that would multiply the costs by five times what was estimated first and the Canadians decided it wouldn’t be practical to build the ship “in the coming season”. Conclusion: no Habbakuk ship would be ready by the end of 1944. And meanwhile Pyke, who the Americans disliked, was taken of the project.
Of the three alternative concepts, Habbakuk I till III, the Habbakuk II came closest to the original model, but the engineers still working on the project couldn’t tell for sure that it would be practical until they would have build a bigger model in Canada. That never happened: the project lost priority by the end of 1943. Lord Mountbatten judged that the steel (which was necessary for the plant where the “pykrete” would be made) could be used better for other things, the Portuguese granted permission to use airfields on the Azores to hunt for U-boats, British airplanes were equipped with long distance fuel tanks, and the number of escorting ships rose sharply. Mountbatten retreating from the project says enough.
So the project went down in silence. A project which, for number of reasons, wouldn’t have been possible without … German help.
Pyke namely was not the real inventor of the “bergship”, that was a German scientist, Dr. Arthur Gerke (von Waldenburg), who had been experimenting with it on Lake Zürich back in 1930, a fact on which an English scientific magazine reported in 1932.
The specialist Pyke brought in to decide on whether it could be done with a natural iceberg (and that would continue working on the project) also had something to do with Germany: Max Perutz. He was born in Vienna (Austria), finished his studies there at the university, but had to run when Hitler took over power in 1938. Perutz namely was, though being baptized as a catholic, from Jewish decent. In the beginning of 1939 he moved from Switzerland to England, but was deported along with other people of German or Austrian nationality on command of Churchill to Newfoundland. Only after a number of months of “internment” he was allowed to return to England.
And then there was the inventor of the “pykrete”: Herman Mark. He was an officer in the Austrian-Hungarian army during the First World War, became a hero on the Italian front, went to work for IG Farben in 1926, was advised by his boss to return to Vienna in the 1930s (he was a son of a, though converted to Christianity, Jew), worked on the university there (where Max Perutz was one of his students), was arrested and locked in a gestapo prison when the Nazis came to power, but could escape to Switzerland with some luck and bravery. And with a swastika flag on the radiator of his car …
Björn Roose
Mountbatten liked the idea and passed it on to Churchill, who liked it too. At the start of 1942 Pyke brought in a specialist to decide on whether an icefloat big enough and strong enough to endure circumstances in the Atlantic could be build in a reasonable span of time. The specialist said he’d better forget about a natural iceberg, because those have not enough surface above water to build an airstrip on it and tend to roll over rather suddenly. The project would have been dismissed if “pykrete” wasn’t invented by then, a mixture of 86 percent water and 14 percent sawdust much stronger than regular ice, melting much slower and unsinkable.
We spare you the technical details, but it was decided that a scale model would be build in Jasper National Park in Canada. It measured 18 meters by 9 meters, weighed a 1000 tons and was kept frozen by a one horsepower motor. The Canadians were sure they could build the first real “bergship” by 1944 and they had the necessary material to do so. But soon problems emerged that would multiply the costs by five times what was estimated first and the Canadians decided it wouldn’t be practical to build the ship “in the coming season”. Conclusion: no Habbakuk ship would be ready by the end of 1944. And meanwhile Pyke, who the Americans disliked, was taken of the project.
Of the three alternative concepts, Habbakuk I till III, the Habbakuk II came closest to the original model, but the engineers still working on the project couldn’t tell for sure that it would be practical until they would have build a bigger model in Canada. That never happened: the project lost priority by the end of 1943. Lord Mountbatten judged that the steel (which was necessary for the plant where the “pykrete” would be made) could be used better for other things, the Portuguese granted permission to use airfields on the Azores to hunt for U-boats, British airplanes were equipped with long distance fuel tanks, and the number of escorting ships rose sharply. Mountbatten retreating from the project says enough.
So the project went down in silence. A project which, for number of reasons, wouldn’t have been possible without … German help.
Pyke namely was not the real inventor of the “bergship”, that was a German scientist, Dr. Arthur Gerke (von Waldenburg), who had been experimenting with it on Lake Zürich back in 1930, a fact on which an English scientific magazine reported in 1932.
The specialist Pyke brought in to decide on whether it could be done with a natural iceberg (and that would continue working on the project) also had something to do with Germany: Max Perutz. He was born in Vienna (Austria), finished his studies there at the university, but had to run when Hitler took over power in 1938. Perutz namely was, though being baptized as a catholic, from Jewish decent. In the beginning of 1939 he moved from Switzerland to England, but was deported along with other people of German or Austrian nationality on command of Churchill to Newfoundland. Only after a number of months of “internment” he was allowed to return to England.
And then there was the inventor of the “pykrete”: Herman Mark. He was an officer in the Austrian-Hungarian army during the First World War, became a hero on the Italian front, went to work for IG Farben in 1926, was advised by his boss to return to Vienna in the 1930s (he was a son of a, though converted to Christianity, Jew), worked on the university there (where Max Perutz was one of his students), was arrested and locked in a gestapo prison when the Nazis came to power, but could escape to Switzerland with some luck and bravery. And with a swastika flag on the radiator of his car …
Björn Roose
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