During World War II Geoffrey Pyke managed to convince
Lord Mountbatten of the potential of his proposal (actually prior to the invention of pykrete) sometime around 1942, and trials were made at two locations in
Alberta, Canada. The idea for a ship made of ice impressed the United States and Canada enough that a , 1,000-ton ship was built in one month on
Patricia Lake in the
Canadian Rockies. However, it was constructed using plain ice (from the lake), before pykrete was proposed. It took slightly more than an entire summer to melt, but plain ice proved to be too weak. Pyke learned from a report by
Herman Mark and his assistant that ice made from water mixed with wood fibres formed a strong solid mass—much stronger than pure water ice.
Max Perutz later recalled: Perutz would later learn that
Project Habakkuk was the plan to build an enormous aircraft carrier, actually more of a
floating island than a ship in the traditional sense. The experiments of Perutz and his collaborators in
Smithfield Meat Market in the
City of London took place in great secrecy behind a screen of animal carcasses. The tests confirmed that pykrete is much stronger than pure ice and does not shatter, but also that it sags under its own weight at temperatures higher than . Mountbatten's reaction to the breakthrough is recorded by Pyke's
biographer David Lampe: Another tale is that at the
Quebec Conference of 1943, Mountbatten brought a block of pykrete along to demonstrate its potential to the entourage of admirals and generals who had come along with
Winston Churchill and
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mountbatten entered the project meeting with two blocks and placed them on the ground. One was a normal ice block and the other was pykrete. He then drew his service pistol and shot at the first block. It shattered and splintered. Next, he fired at the pykrete to give an idea of the resistance of that kind of ice to projectiles. The bullet ricocheted off the block, grazing the trouser leg of Admiral
Ernest King and ending up in the wall. According to Perutz's own account, however, the incident of a ricochetting bullet hitting an Admiral actually happened much earlier in London and the gun was fired by someone on the project—not Mountbatten. Despite these tests, the main Project Habakkuk was never put into action because of limitations in funds and the belief that the tides of the war were beginning to turn in favour of the Allies using more conventional methods. According to the memoirs of British
General Ismay:
After World War II Since World War II, pykrete has remained a scientific curiosity, unexploited by research or construction of any significance. However, new concepts for pykrete crop up occasionally among architects, engineers and
futurists, usually regarding its potential for mammoth offshore construction or its improvement by applying super-strong materials such as synthetic
composites or
Kevlar. In 1985, pykrete was considered for a
quay in
Oslo harbour. However, the idea was later shelved, considering pykrete's unreliability in the real-world environment. Since pykrete needs to be preserved at or below freezing point, and tends to sag under its own weight at temperatures above , an alternative was considered that would guarantee effectiveness and public safety. Researcher Johann Kollegger of
Vienna University of Technology thinks his team's alternative new method is easier, avoiding icy sprayback onto the workers. To build their freestanding structure, Kollegger and his colleagues first cut an plate of ice into 16 segments. To sculpt the segments to have a dome-like curve, the researchers relied on ice's
creep behavior. If pressure is applied to ice, it slowly changes its shape without breaking. One of the mechanisms by which glaciers move, called glacial creep, functions similarly, the researchers say. They attempted to build the largest ice dome in the world. Due to human error, the plug to a compressor that kept the balloon inflated was pulled, leading to the balloon deflating. The team of Dutch students quickly re-inflated the balloon, and resprayed the part of the dome that had collapsed. They continued with their construction, and eventually opened the dome to the public. However within a matter of days the roof caved in; there were no visitors on the site at the time. ==Mechanical properties==