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[Il Palazzo]

Today I learned about the WWII plan by the British to build a humongous aircraft carrier out of icebergs and wood pulp - the HMS Habakkuk.
Sadly, it was not to be.

[Naturegirl1999]

Today I learned about the WWII plan by the British to build a humongous aircraft carrier out of icebergs and wood pulp - the HMS Habakkuk.
Sadly, it was not to be.

Interesting idea

[Grim Portent]

Yeah, it was to be made of pykrete, which is sawdust frozen into ice. It's very strong and long lasting considering what it's made of, as well as cheap and easily repaired. It's got similar properties to concrete as long as it's kept freezing.

Supposedly the man in charge of the idea demonstrated pykrete's properties to Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister, by asking him to put a sample in his bathtub, having dropped by his residence while he was in the bath.

The Mythbusters did an episode with the stuff. They made a small boat out of it as I recall.

[Lord Shonus]

Habakkuk would probably have worked, but keeping it from freezing in warmer waters would have been extremely difficult, and the overall project cost would have been very high. Britain couldn't afford it, and America already had three bankrupt-the-rest-of-the-world projects going.

[Pavellius]

Habakkuk would probably have worked, but keeping it from freezing in warmer waters would have been extremely difficult, and the overall project cost would have been very high. Britain couldn't afford it, and America already had three bankrupt-the-rest-of-the-world projects going.

I'm curious, what were those projects?

[Lord Shonus]

B-29 Superfortress: $3,000,000,000 (194X)
Manhattan Project:  $2,000,000,000 (194X)
B-36 Peacemaker (not finished in time for the war, but under development from 1942): Can't find the figures, but costs were slightly higher than the B-29.


For comparison, the $5,000,000,000 cost for just the first two equal around 40,000,000,000 1990 dollars. In 1938, the combined GDP of the entire Axis alliance was 680,000,000 1990 dollars.Germany alone (by far the largest Axis economy) managed to produce 351,000,000 in 1938. Meaning that just the top two US projects comprised more than 10% of Germany's entire prewar economy.

[Rolan7]

New PC arrived and was assembled, works like a charm. Only thing was that it's a desktop so now built-in Wi-Fi reciever. Run out, by  a random cheapo one for now (might get a proper cable going eventually, just need to figure where to route it trough), plug it in and expect it to not work since no drivers and the PC doesn't have a disk drive of any sort (doesn't seem to support having one either, nice flat surfaces with no interruptions except for cooling vents) so I figure I'd load the CD into my laptop and fling the drivers onto a USB.

Suprisingly enough, windows pulls a driver out of its ass somehow and the thing works like a charm, but what the hell I might as well have the manufacturers drivers on it, so I go to install them anyway. And that is when the thing stops working, so I uninstall the drivers and what do you know, it works with whatever windows found for it :V

Does installing the latest drivers fix your issue /s

[smjjames]

B-29 Superfortress: $3,000,000,000 (194X)
Manhattan Project:  $2,000,000,000 (194X)
B-36 Peacemaker (not finished in time for the war, but under development from 1942): Can't find the figures, but costs were slightly higher than the B-29.


For comparison, the $5,000,000,000 cost for just the first two equal around 40,000,000,000 1990 dollars. In 1938, the combined GDP of the entire Axis alliance was 680,000,000 1990 dollars.Germany alone (by far the largest Axis economy) managed to produce 351,000,000 in 1938. Meaning that just the top two US projects comprised more than 10% of Germany's entire prewar economy.

I think you may have added too many zeroes there? Wiki says B-29 is 3 million, not 3 billion. Also, wiki shows B-39 as 4.1 million in 1940's dollars. Your statement of 10% of Germanys pre-war economy also makes more sense if those numbers are millions, not billions.

[Lord Shonus]

Read the second paragraph of the B-29 article on Wikipedia (which is the same as I've seen cited in many more reliable sources).

One of the largest aircraft of World War II, the B-29 had state-of-the-art technology, including a pressurized cabin; dual-wheeled, tricycle landing gear; and an analog computer-controlled fire-control system that allowed one gunner and a fire-control officer to direct four remote machine gun turrets. The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $42 billion today)—far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project—made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war.

The $3 million dollar figure on Wikipedia was the cost to develop the first prototype, which is only a small fraction of the overall cost. If the  B-29 had cost $3,000,000 to develop, it would have been a massive bargain - each Iowa-class battleship cost more than that (Wikipedia says $100,000,000 but that is almost certainly a converted value).


 As for the rest of the figures, I can't find a reference to the 1940s value of economies (every source uses 1990 dollars or a vague "today's money", so I may have made some conversion errors.

[Sirus]

But the quote says three billion, not three million. I think you misread something.

[Kagus]

But the quote says three billion, not three million.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Lord Shonus]

But the quote says three billion, not three million. I think you misread something.

There's a bit in the sidebar that says "prototype 3,000,000". Total project cost was the $3,000,000,000 figure I originally quoted, smjjames said that was wrong, quoting Wikipedia as saying 3,000,000. I replied stating that that was probably the prototype cost.

[scriver]

"The centre has to be at least... three times bigger than that!"

[scourge728]

Am I the only one who despises this new playing a game by streaming it concept?

[Mephisto]

I'm going to go with a combination of Betteridge's law of headlines and "badwrongfun".