The Iceboat Cometh

In Brief

In World War II, a variety of strange new military technologies came to light. Balloons, nukes, and flying mammals were all employed to wage war on one’s enemies. With all those Department of Defense dollars getting thrown about, is it any surprise that a few bad apples showed up? Hear about the time ice geologists decided to make an aircraft out of an iceberg. Infinite building materials, they crowed. Too bad ice melts.

Party On

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This story published April 1, 2001

Any fashionable scientist in 1944 had himself knee-deep in a weapons project. It all started with an innocent letter from Albert Einstein to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939, wherein Einstein speculated on the construction of atomic weapons:

... it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium like elements would be generated. It is conceivable that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. I suggest we make these bombs, and pound the Germans with them until the sausage-suckers are farting dust.[1]

This letter set the precedent for the scientific exploration of alternate munitions during the war. While this particular project started receiving ample attention in 1943, a few other novel but bizarre weapons systems had also been explored. The Nazis were hard at work producing a tank that was two stories tall. Atmospheric scientists in Japan had discovered the jet stream and used it to carry bomb-toting balloons east across the Pacific to the United States mainland. American physicists and electrical engineers had put effort into the Philadelphia Experiment, where high-intensity magnetic fields were channeled into the hull of the USS Eldridge. The idea was to make the ship invisible to magnetic mines, but it had the unfortunate side effect of turning the entire boat a vibrant shade of lime-green. Homophobic Captain David Herdeg demanded a transfer, and then an honorable discharge, rather than helm this "candy-ass dinghy". Frequent attempts to whitewash the hull only resulted in the green bleeding through. In 1947, the Eldridge was accidentally backed into Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, destroying some 30 meters of pier and two hot dog stands.[2] The ship took in water and was eventually sold as scrap to a windmill outfit in Duluth, Minnesota.

Oppenheimer [left] joking about the weather

Tactless Nuclear Devices

Even with that ignominious end in mind, scientists all over the United States were looking to their own research as a possible path to greater fiscal and wartime glory. The Manhattan Project was no exception. A 24-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears Richard Feynman joined the outfit, which encountered nothing but problems. Millions were spent on a cyclotron to magnetically separate useful uranium-235 from ore, but after almost a year the expensive process only yielded a tiny gram of material. Enrico Fermi, plucky Italian physicist, secretly built a small nuclear reactor under the squash courts of the University of Chicago. He was later denied tenure for participating in illegal acts that could have potentially destroyed the University and the entire state of Illinois. Shortly before the first test at Trinity, New Mexico, Fermi wondered aloud to presiding General Leslie Groves if the explosion might ignite the entire atmosphere, giving everyone the jitters.[3]

With such uncertainty nipping at the heels of what was supposed to be the US's flagship weapons project, other, smaller outfits began to wonder why exactly the Manhattan Project was receiving so much attention. For example, the Bat Bomb Project, run out of Camp Bullis in San Antonio, Texas, attached small incendiary bombs to the backs of Mexican freetailed bats harvested from limestone caves in the area.[4] The idea was that Japan was so peppered with paper houses that roosting bats might sneak under the eaves of roofs and burn down entire cities. Spearheaded by Texan "Doc" (Lyle S.) Adams, those involved with the project felt it had a much stronger chance of success than the Manhattan Project: "We got a sure thing like the bat bomb going, something that could really win the war, and they're jerking off with tiny little atoms. It makes me want to cry," said one bat scientist. Unfortunately, an accidental release of thousands of bats burned down a nearby airstrip.[5]

With these inane projects actually being funded scientists unaffiliated with the Department of Defense across the United States felt stinging envy. Bat biologists, atmospheric scientists, physicists, sediment geologists, electrical engineers and chemists were all getting a piece of the defense budget pie. Everyone else was scrambling for research funding as usual, wondering where they'd gone wrong. In particular, the ice geologists, heretofore in the undignified business of tracking glacier flow, felt left out.

Go With The Floe

The defense project brainchild of young Alfred B. Wells, a fledgling faculty member at the University of Florida, was sheer genius. Noting that a significant portion of the United States naval fleet had been sunk at Pearl Harbor, proposed a solution to the country's maritime woes: he theorized that one could sufficiently stabilize an iceberg to make it a naval vessel. If this held true, the Arctic Ocean above North America had limitless potential as a shipyard: just hack off an enormous floe, cut it to size with blowtorches, and your ship would be off and running.[6] "We can make a ship out of ice," he grandly announced. "It'll be unsinkable!"[7] It would be an ideal vessel to lead off the United States invasion of mainland Japan, which was in the planning stages should the Bomb not work.

The appropriate phone calls were made and diplomatic pressure applied [while FDR was a Senator from New York during Prohibition, Wells' unusually well-connected father secured pictures of the future President in compromising positions with a lobster, a Rockette and two barrels of Canadian whiskey].[8] Sizing up the geography of the situation, it quickly became clear to military officials that the iceberg fleet needed to be built on the Atlantic, preferably near Greenland or northern Canada. Building it on the Pacific, despite bounteous roughneck Alaskan labor nearby, might prove an intelligence liability. As Joint Chief Gerald Meyer put it, "We can't have the Russians figuring out that they can make boats from ice. They've got more ice than drunks. They'd have the most powerful, drunken navy in the world! We could call it the 'Russian Barmada'!"[9] His colleagues shot him dark stares, but the proper order was made and monies authorized.

Tough To The Corps

In fourteen hours, Major General John McBride from the Army Corps of Engineers arrived on the western coast of Greenland with eight thousand men. As is the way with the Corps, McBride wasn't particularly versed in what he was supposed to be doing, but was planning to make a damned good try at it. His first go ended poorly: his team sliced away a seven square mile area of Greenland proper and watched it slide off the continental shelf and sink into the Atlantic. While the only casualty was the seasonally-open Bjorn Bjornstaad's Lucky Horseshoe Lounge, Greenland was outraged. The over-stressed Wells chain-smoked furiously in his office and paced around its cramped environs, cursing at the muskox droppings placed on his doorstep by disgruntled locals; McBride expressed flippant, insincere dismay at the loss of the bar: "We picked this here town, Kangilinnguit, for what appeared to be recreational possibilities for the troops. Fat chance. Maybe Bjorn will be inspired to open a proper nightclub instead of a tin shanty now. And take dog off the menu, while he's at it."

After watching the city of Kangilinnguit float off to sea, the Corps relocated to the two-dog town of Nuuk, somewhat to the south, and found themselves a proper iceberg for the project.[10] They drilled and blasted and split ice for the next week and by March 26, 1945, they had the main structure floating and in position at a makeshift harbor. With boiling hot water and blowtorches they cut walkways and dining halls and bathrooms. The boat, an aircraft carrier, was to carry sixteen thousand troops and lead off a full-scale invasion of mainland Japan in the summer of 1945.

The stately Harold

McBride's men had studied the Finnish in their war against the Russians in 1939: the walkways were lined with fur to protect against the bitter cold; saunas were constructed to keep the sailors onboard comfortable, and a bowling alley was considered but scrapped at the last moment due to space concerns [the adjacent movie theater had box seats added for Rear Admiral Clint Josefson's entourage of pets: two dogs, a cat and an ostrich named Harold]. Even the lifeboats were ice. Construction of an ice anchor was started before it dawned on the Corps that such an anchor would float and therefore not be terribly useful; the resulting half-finished sculpture was donated to Bjorn Bjornstaad in the name of the United States to smooth over any international unrest that might have lingered.

It's Snow Use

On April 14, the ship was christened the USS Marla, after Josefson's wife, and launched. Predictably, it floated. Sailors were equipped with spikes on their shoes for efficient walking; early tests of the runway proved disastrous when airplane wheels were not similarly outfitted and went cartwheeling into the Atlantic. A brilliant GE salesman nearly succeeded in selling two hundred freezers to the project before getting stopped by an eagle-eyed accountant. The enormous engines powering the vessel got so hot that they began to melt the engine rooms and freezing units got installed anyway.

Building the ship in Greenland posed its own special problems. While protecting the United States from Soviet intelligence, the annoying Americas lay in between the boat's launching point and Japan itself. Sailing around Tierra del Fuego would be too lengthy, so a path was charted west across the Atlantic, through the Caribbean sea, and across the Panama Canal. In 1944 the United States still held fast control of the Canal -- all non-US personnel were sent home in order for the iceberg to ferry itself through the canal in secret.

The iceberg, an enormous vessel, bumped unevenly into the Panama Canal. It was twelve feet too wide. The stern but inexperienced Josefson panicked and called for martial law over the entire country so that nobody would see his limping vessel. A team of 40 divers was called in to shave off the sides of the aircraft carrier. Great hunks of broken ice drifted to the surface and bobbed around the boat. Occasionally the hull cracked and hugely expensive refrigerators had to be installed to keep the bottom floor from breaking apart.

A Man, A Plan, A Canal -- Margarita!

The ease of travel usually enjoyed by commercial traffic from the Atlantic to the Pacific was violently interrupted. Boats with perishable goods floated outside the canal for miles in both directions, their contents spoiling in the hot Central American sun. The stench of decaying fish and meat wafted throughout the area, while shipping operators scratched their heads at the big chunks of ice stained with the occasional splotch of engine oil floating past them. Edgar Gutierrez, a hand on a vessel transporting white tigers for the newly-burgeoning Las Vegas, wrote in his diary, "The vessel upwind of us was carrying bodies for medical school dissection. We put two and two together and released the tigers on board. Presto! No more stink!"[11]

Approximate site of the liquor deluge

Meantime, the canal itself was clogged with larger pieces of ice drilled from the boat's hull. In his zeal to close off the canal entirely to traffic, Josefson overlooked a Mexican vessel full of barrels of tequila, the Pollo Loco. Its crew had gotten lost in the swinging Panamanian nightlife and, as they partied, ice floe detritus from the boat struck the Pollo Loco, sinking the ship midway through the canal. Its bright barrels of tequila burst against the ice floes as they bobbed in the locks.[12]

At this moment, Panama City decided to have an impromptu religious revival. In 1914, Panama received its first canonization.[13] St. Limon was recognized by the Vatican for his death at the hands of aboriginal Central Americans: he was martyred by drowning in lime juice. With the martial law paralyzing the city, local octogenarian Chico Rafael had a vision of St. Limon, and, rousing his family, began to throw limes wholesale into the canal. His family shook the lime trees that lined the canal from the East to the West vigorously, and limes fell into the canal by the thousands. The movement quickly grained momentum among the bored, and religious, populace. Children grasped the green fruits by hand and tossed them in; stodgier old men wielded great saws and felled entire trees. Grandmothers delicately brought in little juicers to the shore and viciously squeezed limes for all they were worth. In two of the locks, seawater was clogged entirely through with limes, ice, and tequila. Rioting Panamanians, unhappy with their lot, had just made the world's biggest margarita. Upon return, the Mexican crew lost their crow's-nest man and a rigger who both dove into the margarita with gay abandon and summarily drowned. American officials, trying to break up the fighting with fire hoses, only exacerbated the situation: the more people fell into the canal, the worse things got. Some 6000 arrests were made before the melee was over, and numerous military police officers fell into the drink and joined the other side.

While the giant, Catholicism-inspired cocktail impeded progress through the Western end of the Canal, the ice boat was nearly ready. Repairs were made, stores replenished, sailors rested [stupid though he was, Josefson had the foresight not to let them leave the boat], and the boat was trimmed down enough to pass through the canal. It drifted quietly through the locks, and exited into the Pacific dragging a wake of ice cubes, rotting limes, tequila and passed-out Panamanians.

Hey! Ice Melts!

Josefson steamed ahead through the warm tropical waters. The invasion force was getting antsy; the movie theater on board had been flooded with seawater and frozen solid in Panama to make up for the thinner hull. The outside temperature was getting hotter, and the boat was cracking more and more. About July 17, off the coast of Johnston Island in the South Pacific, ensign Jason Biggles made a startling discovery. It wasn't the sort of discovery that officers were unaware of, but it was certainly news to the thousands of grunts on board. Biggles had realized that, as the boat was made of ice and heading in the warm waters of the South Pacific, that no retreat was possible. The boat would melt and drift apart sometime during the invasion, and while invasions were usually one-way trips, this one had no exit possible whatsoever. Even the lifeboats were ice!

Biggles spread the word. Jittery Marines responded. "I'm sick of these cold showers anyway," announced one Lieutenant Strake. With all the merriment surrounding the party-hungry jarheads in Central America and no opportunities to blow off steam, they'd had enough anyway. As the boat consistently shrank in size motoring across the Pacific, Biggles took matters into his own hands and convinced some 9,000 Marines to mutiny. Within sight of the US-controlled Johnston Island, about halfway to Japan from the American west coast, Biggles and compadres chiseled the engine out of the engine compartment and watched it sink, roiling, into the sea. Without power, they figured, the momentum of the massive iceberg would cause it to drift slowly into the island, then renowned as mango capitol of the Northern Hemisphere.[14] They planned to slide onto shore and begin lives of leisure, and cheered as the engine disappeared from sight. The ship immediately took in water but did not sink: instead it had six inches of icy fluid and slush to chill everyone's feet. Removing the ballast weight of the engine caused the boat to tip way forward, and despite the spikes on everyone's feet pedestrian travel became difficult. Great walls of ice split off the sides as the berg drifted slowly around Johnston Island.

Coming in for a landing on the USS Marla

For two days it floated just a few miles from shore. Josefson had radioed a tugboat to drag the iceberg to the nearby naval base, but his mutineering crew immediately tossed him overboard into the warm, salty waters of the South Pacific. Biggles instructed his men to heave their legs over the back of the vessel and kick with all their might, and in a few short hours the listing boat bumped gently into the sand of a remote desert isle. The men jumped for joy at the sight of world-famous mangoes and sultry natives. The mutineers settled nicely into island life, where they hid from the US Navy. They sat in the lap of luxury, and a few other, more tangible laps while ducking behind the odd tree whenever encountering military police patrols. In this fashion, they managed to elude detection until the late 1970s, at which point the longhaired survivors were given silver stars. As for the iceberg, the more artistic Marines carved it into an homage to President Truman, under whose watchful gaze the boat was launched: they made a looming, ice elephantine colossus. So massive it took two full years to melt, the colossus was written up in National Geographic as evidence of neo-animal worship in the twentieth century. The National Geographic Society noted how few males seemed to be in the culture; all of them were US sailors and hiding in the jungle so as not to be discovered AWOL. As for Wells, the original architect of this grand scheme, he eventually gave up the academic life and became a lifelong ice technician for the Hartford Whalers, the losingest team in the history of the National Hockey League.[15]

Footnotes

1. Read the full letter. It is also notable for Einstein's suggestion of fission as a feasible power source and also his liberal use of the term "punk-ass chump".
2. A young Ray Kroc witnessed this debacle, and vowed never to set up an eatery on any coast. He would later eat his words.
3. Rhodes, p.297
4. The bats in this debacle hailed from Bracken Cave.
5. Couffer, p.96
6. The ice reserves of the Arctic were bountiful.
7. Boyle, 26
8. FDR was no stranger to scandals. He later died in the arms of his beloved wine steward.
9. Woodward, p.316
10. Boyle, p.406
11. Boyle, p.460
12. Jerry, p.56
13. St. Limon is not to be confused with the Costa Rican-derived St. Sandia, patron saint of pin~a coladas.
14. Don't laugh. It could be worse. Goforth, Kentucky is Pork Scrapple Capitol of the South.
15. The Whalers later became the Carolina Hurricanes. Wells retired to New Haven, where he lives today in dotage.

Bibliography

1. Jeremy Boyle. The Icy Voyage of the USS Marla. Brown University Press, 1976. [Out of Print]
2. Jack Couffer. Bat Bomb! World War II's Other Secret Weapon. University of Texas Press, 1992.
3. Richard Rhodes. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Touchstone Books, 1995.
4. Bob Woodward. Gooey: The Life and Times of Alcoholic Joint Chief of Staff Gerald Meyer. Doubleday, 1990. [Out of Print]
5. Gene Willoughbee. "On the Feasibility, or Lack Thereof, of Maritime Ice Vessels". Popular Mechanics, 28:16. .

 
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