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The Eccentric Engineer

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The Eccentric Engineer NETWORK HISTORY 95 Justin Pollard on the life and death of Geoffrey Pyke – a ‘tragic genius’ who wanted to build aircraft carriers from ice and snow the eccentric engineer success. Pyke returned from Canada elated but events were again overtaking him. The U-Boat threat to the Atlantic convoys – the ideal location for an iceship – had faded and the action was turning to warmer and less suitable waters. The improved range of aircraft also made vast mid-oceanic landing strips less necessary. So Pyke’s greatest idea was shelved. He did win! suggest smaller versions, perhaps as temporary harbours, but the Best caption suggested for Mulbery scheme this picture wins an E&T was employed IT WON’T HAVE escaped your fund, which he did very success- commandos to goodie bag. Send your entries instead. notice that it was a bit chilly fully until it went bankrupt, travel quickly to [email protected] After the war, by 24 April. recently. This is a great boon for which is a phrase that seems to around occupied Pyke was a committed headline writers, a great trial for have a certain resonance again Norway, tying up campaigner against the people with places to get to and at the moment. thousands of slow- death penalty and person- great fun for those of us with But Pyke wasn’t a grasping moving Wehrmacht troops ally helped to humiliate the UK children or childish interests, of plutocrat, far from it. He’d trudging through the snow. All government into supporting the which I have both. My thoughts invested all his money in his this thought of snow and ice newly-formed United Nations have turned, quite naturally, to own school in Cambridge which gave Pyke an even greater idea. International Children’s making things from snow – snow was designed to encourage How do we protect the Atlantic Emergency Fund, which they balls, snowmen and snow angels. junior school children to learn convoys? Aircraft. But how to had done their best to ignore. But not aircraft carriers. That’s by themselves: encouraged by get them to the mid-Atlantic? At his death, he was working the difference between me and adults but not lectured by them. Aircraft carriers. But they on modeling how the country tragic genius Geoffrey Pyke. Sadly, this went bust along with needed to be very large and would pay for its nascent Pyke was one of Britain’s the business. hence they were obvious, National Health Service, but a greatest eccentric engineers, a If Pyke was down he was not sluggish targets. Even the pervasive sense of gloom seems man who cut his inventive teeth out. At the outbreak of the largest were not large enough to to have come over him. His as a First World War prisoner of Spanish Civil War, he put his carry most fighting planes. The innovations were widely war making a methodological inventive mind to combat the answer? Ice. Project Habbakuk ridiculed in the press – he was study of how to escape – rise of fascism by arranging the (the spelling comes from a Civil the ‘mad boffin’, whose something thought largely export of dried sphagnum moss Service typo) was born. Pyke’s ludicrous ideas only demon- impossible but which he trium- to make cheap wound dressings. ships would be twice the size of strated their inventor’s distance phantly did. He arrived home a A larger war was by this time the largest liners, but made of from reality. On 21 February hero and promptly arranged for in the offing and just before it ice. Torpedoes would find them 1948, he took a fatal overdose of the details for his escape plan to broke out Pyke had another idea. almost impossible to destroy and barbiturates and died in his be sent to his fellow prisoners in He would arrange for a team of holes could be repaired with sleep. false-bottomed boxes. They opinion pollsters to go to water. assiduously ignored these and Germany disguised as a golfing Having taken the idea to the Winner of our last caption stayed put, proving that tour. In their matches they refugee Austrian chemist Max competition is Paul Marks: escaping is impossible for those would casually ask locals what Perutz at the Cavendish “Guys… If we lose the hats we who don’t want to. they thought about the war. Laboratory in Cambridge, Pyke could at least get the drag At the end of the war, Pyke Results would be collated and suggested that ice mixed with coefficient into double figures.” turned his unusual, analytical sent to Hitler to persuade him wood powder would be even mind to the problem of making that his people had no stomach stronger and better resist defor- money and came up with a for it. It was a brilliant idea but, mation (or creep) and melting. typically risky but successful sadly, the war broke out before This new material, christened solution. He would mathemati- the results could be sent. Pykrete as it was as strong a cally analyse movements in the Pyke had now hit a purple concrete, soon got the blessing commodities markets, mainly patch in his unorthodox of Winston Churchill, allegedly metals, and through a series of thinking, and his strangely after Lord Louis Mountbatten brokers (so no-one knew how wonderful ideas began to flow threw a lump of the material in large his placements were) more freely. He posited the his bath. A small test rig was hedge against the former. In forerunner of the skidoo, which built on Patricia Lake, Alberta, REUTERS, CORBIS/REUTERSREUTERS, other words, he’d run a hedge would allow small numbers of Canada and proved to be a great www.theiet.org/magazine 11 April - 24 April 2009 Engineering & Technology www.theiet.org/magazine 25 April - 8 May 2009 Engineering & Technology 095_ET_issue6_.indd 95 www.theiet.org/magazine 9 May - 22 May 2009 Engineering & Technology2/4/09 10:18:04 www.theiet.org/magazine 23 May - 5 June 2009 Engineering & Technology www.theiet.org/magazine 6 June - 19 June 2009 Engineering & Technology www.theiet.org/magazine 20 June - 10 July 2009 Engineering & Technology www.theiet.org/magazine 11 July - 24 July 2009 Engineering & Technology www.theiet.org/magazine 25 July - 7 August 2009 Engineering & Technology www.theiet.org/magazine 8 August - 11 September 2009 Engineering & Technology www.theiet.org/magazine 12 September - 25 September 2009 Engineering & Technology www.theiet.org/magazine 26 September - 9 October 2009 Engineering & Technology www.theiet.org/magazine 10 October - 23 October 2009 Engineering & Technology.
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