I hiked along the shores of Patricia Lake in Jasper National Park, gazing out over the gorgeous teal waters. During WWII, a top secret project was undertaken here, called the Habbakuk [sic] Project. German u-boats were sitting in a line in the Atlantic, picking off ships as they went by. The Allies needed a way to get their planes out there to destroy the submarines, but no bombers could fly that far. Aircraft carriers were sunk.

Enter Geoffrey Pyke, an ingenious inventor who realized an aircraft carrier could be constructed out of ice. Years before, after the Titanic sank, killer icebergs were targeted for destruction. But whenever a piece was blasted off, the iceberg merely shifted and remained, the bulk beneath the surface simply too tremendous to properly destroy.

Pyke had the idea that even if u-boats took a chunk out of such an ice aircraft carrier, it would persist just as those bergs did.

The project got the go-ahead, and they built a scale model in Patricia Lake, comprised of ice and wood pulp. Churchill wanted a fleet of them made, but there just wasn't the manpower and time to pull it off. Then advances in aircraft technology made alternatives to defeating the u-boat line possible. And so the project was scuttled, and it still remains on the floor of Patricia Lake. Divers can swim down and explore the remains of this ingenious structure.