A secret Second World War program, called Project Habbakuk, was proposed by the British to manufacture icebergs for use as unsinkable aircraft carriers. The idea was to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete, a mixture of wood pulp and ice, for use against German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic, which were beyond the flight range of land-based planes at that time. The idea came from Geoffrey Pyke who worked for Combined Operations.
In the 15 April 2009 episode of Mythbusters, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage built a small boat out of a modified formulation of Pykrete. using newspaper instead of wood pulp. They successfully piloted the boat in Alaskan waters at a speed of 25 miles per hour. Based on this success, they determined that it is possible to build a boat out of Pykrete. They also determined that Pykrete lived up to its purported properties of being bulletproof, stronger than ice, and taking longer to melt than ice. However, they expressed doubt that an aircraft carrier made of Pykrete could have survived long.
In September 2010, the BBC programme Bang Goes The Theory also attempted to recreate a Pykrete boat. A hull using 5,000 kg of hemp fibre Pykrete was frozen in a cold-store, then launched in Portsmouth harbour for a planned trip across the Solent to Cowes. The hull began to melt almost immediately; after an hour it had taken on enough water to cause it to capsize before they could even leave the harbour.
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