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Have you ever heard about Habakkuk? Do you know what Pykrete was? Most probably not, but these were neither deities of the Hittites nor H.P. Lovecraft's demons; however, if you were familiar with them, you will not doubt for a second about purchasing winter equipment.

These are the code names of two top - secret projects of WWII allied military technology research and development seeking to provide the coalition with floating outposts and bases for aircraft and ships crossing the North Atlantic. Very few people ever heard about these projects; nevertheless, they had their significance because the experience obtained with them was useful for the development of the Mulbery blocks used to build a prefab port during the Normandy invasion, in 1944, and later, for the development of Hamilton's hexagons, a concept which successfully proved that you can build a floating airport.

Habakkuk was a project in which Winston Churchill was personally involved; the idea consisted in capturing and modifying an iceberg in order to turn it into a floating combined military base, complete with docks, a runway, anti-aircraft artillery, hangars and barracks for a small garrison. They attempted to find an adequate iceberg of the kind that sunk the transatlantic H.M.S. Titanic.

This would naturally be a top-secret installation so that the Germans would not attack it or copy the concept for their own use; their submarines would have greatly benefited from such outposts, not to mention their own secret weaponry programmes. Icebergs float following currents that take them slowly southwards; they melt also a t a very slow pace and they are quite stable and strong.

However, many practical engineering problems arose, so project Habakkuk was abandoned, and Pykrete - a conceptual evolution of the former - took its place. The idea of the Pykrete project was to actually build a big iceberg by making a small one grow into an adequate shape without the use of any metal structures that would eventually accelerate melting by compression.

Sawdust was to be used, mixed with water, so that the whole iceberg would gain strength, and actually a prototype was tested somewhere in the coasts of Canada, which was chosen as experimental grounds due to its relative isolation and the abundance of wood to work with, ice and other things required. Nevertheless, the idea was proved to be too complicated to put into practice, but we can speculate that living conditions there would not have been too much different that those found at arctic bases or research outposts; a lot of winter equipment would have been required.

Fresh water would not have been a problem, since icebergs are always made of it; they grow from glaciers or accretion of snow. There is no sea water in an iceberg.

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