Bailey Bridge

in Dorset]] ]] Donald Bailey was a civil servant in the British War Office who tinkered with model bridges as a hobby. He had proposed an early prototype for a Bailey bridge before the war in 1936, but the idea was not acted upon. Bailey drew an original proposal for the bridge on the back of an envelope in 1940. The first prototype was tested in 1941. For early tests, the bridge was laid across a field, about 2 ft above the ground, and several Mark V tanks were filled with pig iron and stacked upon each other. The prototype of this was used to span Mother Siller's Channel, which cuts through the nearby Stanpit Marshes, an area of marshland at the confluence of the River Avon and the River…

museum in Ranville, Calvados, France, can all be clearly seen]] construct a Bailey bridge in Italy, September 1943. Wood planks are being laid over the stringers to construct the roadbed]] The success of the Bailey bridge was due to the simplicity of the fabrication and assembly of its modular components, combined with the ability to erect and deploy sections with a minimum of assistance from heavy equipment. Many previous designs for military bridges required cranes to lift the pre-assembled bridge and lower it into place. The Bailey parts were made of standard steel alloys, and were simple enough that parts made at a number of different factories were interchangeable. Each individual part…