4. Icebergs
Let's stick with World War 2 for a second, but take a trip over the pond to Great Britain. The year is 1942, again. I mean seriously, what was going on in that year for these hilarious weapons to be dreamt up? But I digress. There was a shortage of aircraft carriers to fight the pesky German U-boats in the Atlantic, so the Army were tasked to come up with alternatives. The answer that won the day? Icebergs. The Insanity Our man of the day award here goes to Geoffrey Pyke. A man regarded as a genius by Admiral of The Fleet Lord Mounbatten, his bright idea was to construct big floating blocks of ice on which aircraft could land. He codenamed it Project Habakkuk, and in a sign of the hilarity to ensue, it was constantly misspelled in various documents as Habbakuk, Habakuk or Habadasher. So the unspellable project was majorly underway. Pyke, the genius let's remind ourselves, realised that icebergs actually have too small a surface to land planes on and have an alarming tendency to roll over. No shit. Undeterred he decided to create synthetic ice, using a substance he called Pykrete. The research on Pykrete took place in a refrigerated meat locker behind a protective screen of frozen animal carcasses, which is yet another sign of the ridiculous nature of this entire story. After tests they deemed successful, Lord Mountbatten decided to show Churchill, Roosevelt and other army types Pyke's idea at a meeting in Quebec. He took in two blocks, one of ice and the other of Pykrete. He took out his gun and fired at the ice, shattering it. He then shot at the Pykrete and the bullet ricocheted around the room, like a goddamn cartoon, and grazed an Admiral's leg. Let that sink in for a minute. A bullet careering around a room that contains The President and The Prime Minister, all because they wanted to see if icebergs could win the war. Brilliant stuff. Project Habibi, or whatever it was called, was abandoned soon after, what with it being all kinds of nonsense. But I'm glad the memory of it never died.