In this story, I investigate the terrible toll that German submarines took on Allied shipping convoys during World War II, and how a tiny lake in Jasper National Park might have turned the tides of war.
To listen to this episode, click the play button above
As I start this story, I have a confession to make. When I was a kid in high school, of all the subjects I was required to study, I hated history the most. Like many kids, I saw history as nothing but wars and dead people, and a list of dates to be memorized and forgotten as soon as the test was over.
Unfortunately, like many students, it turned out it wasn’t history I disliked, it was the passionless way that it was taught to me. As a kid, it wasn’t relevant to my life and I couldn’t touch it or emotionally connect to it.
In the early 1990s, when I first began my career as a Park Naturalist there were two groups, the history folks and the nature folks, and I was a nature guy. Surprisingly though, I later had one of those eureka moments that often change things. One day, I suddenly realized that if I wanted to understand nature, I also had to understand people’s interaction with it. The story of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway would be pretty dull, were it not for the physical obstacles that had to be overcome in order to complete the line.
I realized that history wasn’t just wars and dead people, history was all about stories, and people who once lived, dreamed, suffered, adventured, and left behind a rich legacy of experiences and knowledge. I became a ravenous consumer of history and to this day, my love of nature is enhanced by my love of history.
If you have teenagers in your life that are bored with history, stop teaching it to them, instead, tell them a story that took place at another time. Touch their imagination. Help them see themselves in other places, times, and stories. You may see their eyes open just like mine did. Unfortunately, it took many years before I realized how much the past could teach us and how much it influences our lives every day.
This week, I’m reaching back to the darkest days of the second world war, a time when the Allied forces were on the brink of defeat, and German submarines ruled the north Atlantic.
Historians often say that those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them, and in some ways, that leads us into our story.
To understand our story, we need to look much further back, to the very first submarines.
The Earliest Submarines
The predecessors of today’s submarines date back to 1578 when William Bourne built a prototype in England. It was a crude affair, but in 1596 a Scottish mathematician and theologian, John Napier pondered their future. He wrote:
These inventions besides devises of sayling under water with divers, other devises and strategems for harming of the enemyes by the Grace of God and worke of expert Craftsmen I hope to perform.
History of Submarines, Wikipedia
In 1648, Bishop John Wilkins of Chester, England pondered the potential of submarines when he described these 5 advantages of underwater boats:
-
- Tis private: a man may thus go to any coast in the world invisibly, without discovery or prevented in his journey.
- Tis safe, from the uncertainty of Tides, and the violence of Tempests, which do never move the sea above five or six paces deep. From Pirates and Robbers which do so infest other voyages; from ice and great frost, which do so much endanger the passages towards the Poles.
- It may be of great advantages against a Navy of enemies, who by this may be undermined in the water and blown up.
- It may be of special use for the relief of any place besieged by water, to convey unto them invisible supplies; and so likewise for the surprisal of any place that is accessible by water.
- It may be of unspeakable benefit for submarine experiments.
History of Submarines, Wikipedia
The first submarine to operate like modern subs, being able to submerge and travel underwater, while later surfacing, was built by a German-American engineer named Julius Kroehl in 1866. It could dive as deeply as 31 metres or 103 feet.
The first submarine to operate like modern subs, being able to submerge and travel underwater, while later surfacing, was built by a German-American engineer named Julius Kroehl in 1866. It could dive as deeply as 31 metres or 103 feet.Click To TweetRobert Whitehead invented the first self-propelled torpedo in 1866. With torpedos, submarines could finally take their role as a terrifying weapon of war. Whitehead’s torpedo could travel at 13 km/hr and hit a ship more than 600 metres distant.
Torpedo equipped submarines first debuted in the Russo-Turkish War when Russian submariners sunk the Turkish ship Intibah.
By the early 1900s, the modern submarine began to take shape. They were equipped with combination diesel-electric engines allowing them to run on diesel when surfaced and electric batteries while submerged. The scene was now set for World War I.
Submarine Warfare during World War I
Entering the war, the Royal Navy had the biggest submarine fleet in the world with 74, while Germany only had 20.
By the time war broke out, torpedos had become effective up to 975 metres. While the Germans had fewer subs, they sent them out into the North Sea where they sunk the HMS Pathfinder and Formidable.
When British forces chose to keep their large battleships closer to shore and away from the German subs, the Germans aimed their torpedos at merchant ships ferrying supplies between North America and BritainClick To TweetWhen British forces chose to keep their large battleships closer to shore and away from the German subs, the Germans aimed their torpedos at merchant ships ferrying supplies between North America and Britain. As an Island, England relied heavily on imported munitions, weapons, food, and other necessities from Canada and the U. S.
On May 7, 1915 the passenger liner Lusitania was torpedoed and 1,198 passengers and crew lost their lives. As the submarine war intensified, the Allies used mines, a fleet of almost 10,000 ships and almost as many planes to hunt down the German subs. While the Germans lost 178 U-boats, their subs managed to sink 5,000 ships.
Towards the end of the first world war, Canadian Robert Boyle led a team that developed the first active sonar that detects hidden submarines by bouncing sound waves off of their hulls and listening to the echo. Since sonar operators know the speed sound waves travel underwater, they can determine the distance of the sub by measuring the amount of time it takes for the sound waves to reflect.
Boyle moved to Alberta in 1919 and became Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science at the University of Alberta. Later he joined the National Research Council of Canada as the director of physics and supervised additional research into radar during the Second World War.
U-boats and the Battle of the Atlantic
When World War II broke out, the Battle of the Atlantic became the longest continuous battle of the war. It was also one that had Canadians right in the middle. The first salvos began when war was declared in September of 1939 and didn’t end until the Germans surrendered in May of 1945.
Like the first world war, Britain absolutely depended on supply ships bringing food, munitions, and other needed goods to England. Without these vital supply lines, allied forces could never have defeated the Germans.
The German Unterseeboots, or U-boats as they became known operated virtually unrestricted across the Atlantic all the way to the shores of Canada and even within the confines of the St. Lawrence River.
Coastal ports in Halifax, Sydney, and St. Johns were staging points for huge convoys of ships destined to sail across the Atlantic for Britain. The Germans resumed their unrestricted torpedoing of military and merchant ships, just as they had done in World War I, but with a renewed vigour.
The German U-boat fleet grew from 30 to some 300 subs and they began hunting in groups referred to as wolfpacks. Between January and July of 1942, they sunk 400 Allied ships. Each ship was precious as it took far longer to build a new ship than it was taking the German’s to sink them.
The use of sonar helped Allied ships better detect subs, and innovations like depth charges helped them to destroy more of them.
According to a story on Canada’s veteran’s affairs website:
The growth of Canada’s navy was remarkable. At the beginning of the Second World War, the RCN had only six ocean-going ships and 3,500 personnel. By the end of the war, Canada had one of the largest navies in the world with 434 commissioned vessels and 95,000 men and women in uniform. Canada’s industry also played an important role in the growth of our military and merchant navies. From 1941 to 1945, Canadian shipyards produced approximately 403 merchant ships, 281 fighting ships, 206 minesweepers, 254 tugs, and 3,302 landing craft.
The Battle of the Atlantic, Veteran’s Affairs Canada
From 1941 to 1945, Canadian shipyards produced approximately 403 merchant ships, 281 fighting ships, 206 minesweepers, 254 tugs, and 3,302 landing craft.Click To TweetCanada played an integral role in the Battle of the Atlantic, and in 1943 Canadian Rear Admiral Leonard Murray took command of all the naval and air forces in the North Atlantic. This was the only theatre of war commanded by a Canadian.
The Veterans Affair story continues:
Helping the Allies triumph in the Battle of the Atlantic came at a high price. More than 1,600 Merchant Navy personnel from Canada and Newfoundland were killed. Indeed, percentage-wise, their casualty rate was higher than those of any of Canada’s fighting services during the Second World War—one out of every seven Merchant Navy sailors who served was killed or wounded.
The RCN and RCAF also paid a high toll in the Battle of the Atlantic. Most of the 2,000 RCN officers and men who died during the war were killed during the Battle of the Atlantic, as were 752 members of the RCAF. There were also civilian casualties. On October 14, 1942, 136 people died when the ferry SS Caribou was sunk as it crossed from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland.
The Battle of the Atlantic, Veteran’s Affairs Canada
The North Atlantic was the perfect hunting ground for German U-boats. It covered a vast area, much of it so far from land that it was too far for air patrols to protect the ships in the Allied convoys. While the ships travelled in huge convoys to ensure submarines couldn’t sink them all, this lack of air cover left the entire fleet vulnerable.
By the end of 1941, the British Admiralty was getting desperate. As U-boats sent ship after ship to the bottom, the lack of a place for planes to land and refuel continued to leave the convoys vulnerable.
In his memoirs, Sir Winston Churchill confessed that the only thing that really frightened him in the war was the u-boat peril. He wrote:
…our life-line, even across the broad oceans, and especially in the entrances to the Island, was endangered. I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the Battle of Britain.
Wit and Wisdom, Finest Hour 154, Spring 2012
Plans for an Ice Aircraft Carrier
Around this time, just about any idea, no matter how strange, had to be taken into consideration. In 1942, Geoffrey Pyke, an eccentric advisor to Lord Louis Mountbatten had an idea. He recalled British military ships testing artillery on icebergs in the Atlantic but, try as they might, they did little to damage these unstoppable mountains of ice.
What if the navy could harness the power of ice to create an invincible airstrip for allied planes to land and refuel to protect convoys in U-boat alley?Click To TweetThe sinking of the Titanic after hitting an iceberg in 1912 also attested to the invincibility of ice. What if the navy could harness the power of ice to create an invincible airstrip for allied planes to land and refuel to protect convoys in U-boat alley? At first, Pyke considered the possibility of dragging large sections of the northern icecap south so they could be harnessed for airstrips.
Mountbatten pitched the idea to the Prime Minister, and Churchill put his support behind the idea. According to a historical report by Susan Langley in the Canadian Journal of the History of Science:
On 4 December 1942, Churchill dictated a ‘Most Secret’ memo detailing how these ice airfields should be constructed. He admitted and demonstrated an absence of knowledge about the physical properties of ice and observed that the concept was only possible if the materials and labour in the form of seawater and low temperatures were provided by nature.
Operation Habbakuk: A World War II Vessel Prototype, Susan B.M. Langley
There were some lofty specks required as well. It would need to rise at least 15 metres above the waterline to accommodate rough seas. Clearly, it would be impossible to just excise a large ice flow for this project. In addition, since the visible portion of any iceberg represents only around 10% of its size, a 15-metre deck height would extend 150 m below the surface. This would simply be too huge to tow around the ice.
It became clear that any ice aircraft platform would need to be constructed rather than excavated. There were many challenges, including the fact that once you build an ice ship, you may lose the invincibility of icebergs; and that was the main attraction of the project.
Nevertheless, plans were made to move forward with a prototype. The actual ship would be enormous, stretching 610 m long, by 91 m wide and 61 m depth to ensure that 15 metres would be above the waterline.
A total of 20 electric motors were to be installed to power refrigeration and propulsion. When the project was approved, the British Admiralty came to the one nation that really knows ice – Canada, in particular, the National Research Council, and Dr. C.J. Mackenzie.
The code name for the project was to be Habbakuk. This term, coined by Geoffrey Pyke was a mis-spelling of the Old Testament book of the prophet Habakkuk which stated:
Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. (Habakkuk 1:5).
If you want to build an ice battleship, then you better learn everything you can about the properties of ice, and so research projects were undertaken at the Universities of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Researchers at Lake Louise in Banff National Park as well as Montreal, New York, and London tested the properties of ice.
In the end, they chose a tiny lake in Jasper National Park known as Patricia Lake as the site to build a scale model of the ship. The decision to select Patricia Lake was related to the town of Jasper having good railroad connections as well as the proximity of a camp of conscientious objectors, mostly of Mennonite and Doukhobor faiths nearby.
During the war, conscientious objectors refusing to do military service were required to make themselves available for alternative services as and when required. These conchies, as they were often described, provided the labour to build the Patricia Lake prototype, although they had no idea they were actually working on a wartime project.
While Dr. Mackenzie originally believed the idea of an ice ship to be “another of those mad wild schemes (that started) with a couple of crazy men in England”, he took his task seriously.
For their prototype, they used lake ice, despite the fact that any operating ships would need to be built in place as they were going to be too immense to transport from a shipyard to any seaport. Mackenzie wrote:
At the present time I am being led to believe that the use of material cut from lakes is completely out of the question but we must manufacture the material either in place or in blocks. I think the welding would present no difficulty were it not for the coefficient of expansion and I think some form of porous macro reinforcement is absolutely essential.
Operation Habbakuk: A World War II Vessel Prototype, Susan B.M. Langley
Once again, Geoffrey Pike had a solution. Pyke learned of research being done in Brooklyn by Dr. Herman Mark where they discovered that adding wood fibres to water helped to create a much stronger form of ice. Pyke handed a report penned by Mark to molecular biologist (and future Nobel Laureate) Max Perutz. Perutz, who once a student of Dr Mark, realized that adding fibre to add structure to ice was very similar to adding metal wires to concrete to increase strength and stability.
When Perutz tested the process, he discovered that by adding as little as four percent wood pulp, the resulting ice was a strong as concrete. In one experiment, they made a block 60 x 60 x 30 cm and when they fired a bullet at it, the bullet simply shattered. He then coined the term Pykrete by melding Pyke’s name with the word concrete.
It seemed like the perfect material for a ship of ice while reducing the brittle character of pure ice.
Apparently, Lord Mountbatten was so excited about Pykrete that he just had to demonstrate its value to Churchill himself. According to Mountbatten’s biographer, David Lampe:
What happened next was explained several years after the war by Lord Mountbatten in a widely-quoted after-dinner speech. “I was sent to Chequers (Britain’s Prime Ministerial country house) to see the Prime Minister and was told he was in his bath. I said, ‘Good, that’s exactly where I want him to be.’ I nipped up the stairs and called out to him, ‘I have a block of a new material which I would like to put in your bath.’ After that, he suggested that I should take it to the Quebec onference.” The demonstration in Churchill’s steaming bath had been most dramatic. After the outer film of ice on the small pykrete cube had melted, the freshly exposed wood pulp kept the remainder of the block from thawing.
Pyke, the Unknown Genius, Lampe, David
Not only was Pykrete strong, but it was buoyant, light, moldable, it and could even be turned on a lathe. Unfortunately, it also meant that ice couldn’t simply be harvested, it had to be purpose manufactured and that was going to dramatically raise the cost of building one of these ships.
Patricia Lake was far too small to build a full-size version of the planned ice aircraft carrier, so a 1:10 scale model was planned.Click To TweetPatricia Lake was far too small to build a full-size version of the planned ice aircraft carrier, so a 1:10 scale model was planned. In the end, though, while the depth and width fit the 1:10 scale measurement, the model’s 18 m length was far less than the 61 m necessary to be fully at scale. All this time, though, u-boats continued to hammer supply convoys crossing the Atlantic, but things were beginning to change on that front.
By the middle of February, 1943 work was underway on the shores of the lake. The construction was supervised by Dr. C. Niven, and the prototype was finished by April 10th.
According to Susan Langleys article:
In the meantime work progressed on the model under the auspices of Dr C. Niven. Although the model was ostensibly under construction between 1 February and 31 March 1943, in fact work did not begin until the middle of February. Most of the delay was caused by the late arrival of materials and the interval wsa (sic) spent experimenting with various means of bonding ice blocks. Electricity was brought in by means of lines to a small generating station at the prestigious Jasper Park Lodge and an area was cleared on the frozen surface of the lake, the wooden flooring laid and wall framing erected. Pitch caulking took place from 15-21 February, followed by asphalt covering for the floor and walls (22-27 February) while tinsmiths worked on the ducts. The first layer of ice was laid on the flooring between 1-6 March, but piping problems began to appear. A brine coolant had originally been chose; however, many joints arrived damaged and leaked badly, leading to the decision to use cold air instead. About this time Mackenzie began to express doubts as to the project’s viability. Also, the weight of the ice and insulation rising to eight feet up the walls was causing the floor to bow up ward. By 13 March the floor piping was completed and sealed with pitch. The ducts had been packed round with sand and then covered over with crushed ice and water. By 20 March, the wall piping was in place as was the second 2 7-inch thick layer of ice. The structure wsa (sic) cut loose from the surface ice of the lake, partly to test how it floated and partly to relieve the weight strain on the floor. It sank to the level of the surface of the ice flooring inside and remained stable. In the following week the third layer of ice was installed and a channel cut in it for a longitudinal duct to run beneath the refrigeration chamber. By 10 April the machinery was in place and functioning. A roof was built over the model to protect the machinery and open surface insulation from the elements. This gave it the appearance of a ‘boathouse’
Operation Habbakuk: A World War II Vessel Prototype, Susan B.M. Langley
As the prototype was completed and further testing took place, project manager Mackenzie recommended that it be discontinued. By June, the refrigeration equipment was turned off, and slowly, slowly, by late autumn, the remaining portions of the model sunk into the depths of the lake. It’s twisted hulk still sits on the bottom of Patricia Lake and attracts the occasional adventurous scuba diver who wants to explore this unique piece of Canadian history.
The cost of building a full-size Habbakuk was estimated to be as high as £17 million which was still less than half the cost of a conventional aircraft carrier.Click To TweetThe cost of building a full-size Habbakuk was estimated to be as high as £17 million which was still less than half the cost of a conventional aircraft carrier. Unfortunately, conditions were changing in the North Atlantic.
After the allies invaded Iceland in 1940, the island nation offered a convenient location for planes to take off and land in order to offer protection for convoys as they traversed u-boat alley. At the same time, new plane designs allowed them to fly much further and stay over the convoys for longer as well.
Finally, advancements in centimetric radar allowed ships and planes to identify smaller and smaller targets and this was helping to turn the tide in the submarine wars as more German u-boats were sent to the bottom.
All-in-all, Habbakuk was obsolete before she was even built. However, their research proved that ice aircraft carriers could be built and that the technology was viable. Unfortunately, in this case, it would take too long and cost too much money to put a fleet of these ships into operation in the timeline needed.
As a nation, the Battle for the Atlantic helped show how valuable Canada could be to the war effort. Without the victory at sea, there was no way the Allies could have won the war. The massive supply convoys travelling between Canada’s east coast and England were Europe’s lifeline.
During the war, 59 Canadian-registered merchant ships were sunk, but our fleet made 25,343 transits of the Atlantic hauling almost 165 million tonnes of essential supplies to Allied Europe.Click To TweetDuring the war, 59 Canadian-registered merchant ships were sunk, but our fleet made 25,343 transits of the Atlantic hauling almost 165 million tonnes of essential supplies to Allied Europe.
Despite the vital role that Canada’s merchant seamen made to the war effort, they were not recognized as veterans and were not given either veteran’s benefits or pensions. It took until 1992, almost 50 years after the end of World War II before they were finally, formally, recognized.
This finally made them eligible to receive disability pensions, allowances and health care benefits available to other veterans, but they never received any retroactive compensation for the almost five decades they were denied benefits.
After four Merchant Navy veterans began a hunger strike on Parliament Hill in 1998, the government finally agreed to award cash payments to make up for so many years of withheld benefits. Payments began in 2000, 55-years after the end of the war and in 2003, Parliament designated September 3 as Merchant Navy Veteran’s Day.
Today, Patricia Lake is a beautiful place to relax, swim, canoe, and even fish – as long as you have a valid National Park Fishing license. If you’re lucky, you may spot a great blue heron or loon plying the emerald green waters of the lake.
A 4.8 km loop trail follows the shoreline of the lake and offers opportunities to spot local wildlife like elk and mule deer. Jasper Dive Adventures also offers guided tours for qualified divers to descend into the lake to visit the remains of the ice boat.
On the shore of the lake is a plaque dedicated by the Alberta Underwater Archaeological Association telling the story of Project Habbakuk. If you’d like to explore the history of Alberta’s Rocky Mountain Region, why not visit WardCameron.ca and book your custom guided experience now.