A question of.... size. (Ship 'What if' related)

26 propulsion pods on a 1.2 km ship would make an interesting game of pin the tail on the donkey for the U-boat captains. I specified individual torpedoes because enough warhead mass on target would eventually turn the iceberg carrier into a collection of icebergs.

Well sure... eventually. Now you've got me imagining a U-Boat captain unloading his full load of torpedoes on this thing. Going home, coming back a few weeks later and doing it all over again and again for a couple of months till the Habakkuk crew is lining the sides cheering him on and encouraging him and then buying him and the crew drinks when he finally has a mental breakdown from frustration...

And thanks everyone for being interested :)

Randy
 
Forgive me if this is ignorant, but the Habakkuk mockups that portray a ship of even remotely comparable scale to a conventially-built ship seem foolish. Ice is not nearly as buoyant as air is, the best illustration being how little of an iceberg sits above the surface. Wouldn't a ship built from ice, which has the same carrying capacity as an aircraft carrier of the day, need to be orders of magnitude larger to stay afloat? You'd still have the advantage that such a craft would be all but unsinkable, but to do anything useful with pykrete, you wouldn't be talking about a really big ship, you're talking about building an island that you can drive.
 
Forgive me if this is ignorant, but the Habakkuk mockups that portray a ship of even remotely comparable scale to a conventially-built ship seem foolish. Ice is not nearly as buoyant as air is, the best illustration being how little of an iceberg sits above the surface. Wouldn't a ship built from ice, which has the same carrying capacity as an aircraft carrier of the day, need to be orders of magnitude larger to stay afloat? You'd still have the advantage that such a craft would be all but unsinkable, but to do anything useful with pykrete, you wouldn't be talking about a really big ship, you're talking about building an island that you can drive.
Habbakuk was not to be a solid mass of Pykrete, but a huge ship with a 40+ foot hull of Pykrete. As such it is still able to use shape for bouyancy. In any case Habbakuk was about two orders of Magnitude larger than aircraft carriers of the Day
 
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