This cover image from 1944 is one of the earliest published photos of a Bailey bridge, a piece of equipment that proved invaluable to the Allies during World War II and has since been widely used worldwide.
Invented by Donald Bailey, a British civil servant, in 1940, it first saw service in the North African campaign in 1942. A portable prefabricated truss bridge, each of its sections 10 feet long and 5 feet tall consisted of 17 parts.
Each cross rectangular unit weighed 570 pounds and could be carried by four soldiers. No special tools or heavy equipment were needed to assemble them. The modular units could be connected together to form lights over 200 feet and were strong enough to support tanks.
Thousands of Bailey bridges were erected by Allied forces across the European and Pacific theaters, allowing units to advance across rivers or ravines in areas where retreating enemy forces had destroyed bridges.
British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery paid this tribute: “As for my own operations, with the Eighth Army in Italy and with the 21st Army Group in north-west Europe, I could never have kept up the speed and the pace of forward movement without large supplies of Bailey Bridging.
