About the book
Geoffrey Pyke, an inventor prone to flashes of genius, is the subject of David Lampe's biography. During the Second World War Pyke was attached to Combined Operations, where Lord Mountbatten became his keen patron. His projects included the Weasel carrier, a forerunner of the Snow-cats that Fuchs and Hillary used to cross the Antarctic in 1958; Habbakuk, a design for an aircraft carrier that could not be sunk; and an unusual plan for sinking the battleship Tirpitz. Once the war ended, he proposed a solution to the fuel crisis and drew up plans for a health service. Lampe portrays a remarkable character whose ideas ranged from military engineering to postwar public services.
Dave Child, founder of Readable.io, named it his favorite among the biographies and histories he now reads, saying Pyke's life would seem unrealistic in a novel and singling out the plan to build a giant aircraft carrier from pykrete.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Dave Child (Founder/Readable.io)
And now I'm in my late 30s, I find myself reading more biographies and histories, and my favourite is Pyke - The Unknown Genius by David Lampe. Geoffrey Pyke's story is the kind you might read about in a work of fiction and dismiss as unrealistic. And today, he's virtually unknown. I particularly like the story of Project Habakkuk, the aim of which was to build a gigantic aircraft carrier out of "pykrete" - ice with added sawdust - which, apocryphally, gained traction when Pyke dumped a large block of pykrete into Churchill's bath and it refused to melt.
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