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Letter: More than ice

Published 16 January 2013

From Tom Groves

You told the tale of research during the second world war on ships made of ice under the guise of Project Habbakuk (22/29 December 2012, p 63). I suspect it was a cover for wider work.

When at the National Physical Laboratory in the late 1960s, a colleague showed me a film labelled Project Habbakuk. It showed a test of something which was definitely not an iceberg ship. In fact, it resembled a semi-submersible rig, with a deck above wave height on very stout columns supported by a pair of submerged pontoons. What other ideas might Habbakuk have included?

Kennington, Kent, UK

Issue no. 2900 published 19 January 2013

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