on France or Japan. A biography of Pyke by David Lampe indicates that he had decided to use ice reinforced with wood fibres, but other accounts make it clear that this is not the case. Pyke was not the first to suggest a floating mid-ocean stopping point for aircraft, nor the first to suggest that such a floating island could be made of ice, German scientist Dr. A. Gerke of Waldenburg in Germany proposed the idea and carried out some preliminary experiments in Lake Zurich in 1930. Pyke's memorandum included a couple of cover notes. The first requested that Mountbatten should read the suggestions himself before allowing it to fall into the hands of "that damned fool Lushington". The second, longer, note asked that Mountbatten read the first thirty pages of the memorandum before deciding whether it was worthwhile to continue "It may be gold: it may only glitter. I can't tell. I have been hammering at it too long and am blinded". Mountbatten handed it to Brigadier Wildman-Lushington, and Lushington with the assistance of JD Bernal, concluded that Pyke's main proposals were feasible. In December 1942, Prime Minister Churchill issued a directive that research on the project should be pressed forward with the highest priority and he expressed the opinion that nature be allowed to do as much of the work as possible. The project to build a large aircraft carrier of pykrete was known as Project Habakkuk, and Pyke was sent to Canada with a personal introduction from Winston Churchill to Mackenzie King. While he was away, an Admiralty committee headed by the Chief of Naval Construction sent a memorandum about Habakkuk to Mountbatten. Pyke returned from Canada. Pyke's original memorandum mentioned other applications for pykrete such as building landing ships for the prospective invasion of Japan and for quickly constructing fortifications at a beachhead by spraying an existing building with pykrete liquid that would freeze into a thick layer. Many of these ideas relied upon a misplaced faith in the qualities of supercooled water which he thought could be used as a weapon of war: pumped from a ship it could be used to instantly form bulwarks of ice or even be sprayed directly onto enemy soldiers. However, such ideas were according to Max Perutz, impractical. In September 1943, Pyke proposed a slightly less ambitious plan for pykrete vessels to be used in support of an amphibious