Simply the Best!
Scott
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Are you perhaps referring to Project Habakkuk? That aircraft carrier was made out of pykrete, a mixture of water and woodpulp. When frozen, pykrete was stronger than normal ice and melted slower. It could be machined and cast into shapes like metal.
There were only one scale model made at the Jasper National Park in Canada to test it, but no real aircraft carrier was made since the refrigerator unit needed onboard had to be enormous. There were also other reasons to cancel the project, one was that it would have cost more money and machinery than a whole fleet of conventional aircraft carriers.
It took three hot summers to finally melt the prototype.
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Like the Hercules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules
I guess that just tells how dark the mood was in the summer of 1942. The Atlantic could be closed off by U-boats, Russia could still fall, The Suez canal was threathned, an attack/invation of France postponed until 1944 and Guadalcanal was held on the very limit. Desperate measueres for desperate times.
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There was actually an episode of Mythbusters that actually the viability of Pykrete. Novel idea, not very effective.
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In addition to Pykrete other outlandish inventions were thought of but never made it beyond thinking about it. These include
-Bamboo landing strip on the ocean that could be towed around
-A battleship on a submarine hull so that it could it could be semi-submersible in the water and be a smaller target while providing protection
-submarine troop transport
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although one NUTS idea did make it, a submarine that launches an aircraft out of it. The I-400.
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