Bailey bridge’s designer dies

Press, 9 May 1985, Page 20

Bailey bridge’s designer dies

.NZPA-PA London Sir Donald Bailey, inventor of the Bailey bridge which played a crucial role in the Allied victory in World War 11, died on Monday in hospital. He was 83. The movable military bridge was used in the Normandy landings and carried Allied troops, tanks and guns over rivers and gorges in Europe. Field-Marshal Montgomery said: “Without the Bailey bridge we should not have won the war.”

Sir Donald, who spent much of his boyhood making model bridges from pieces of wood and string, was modest about his achieve-

ment, saying it was “just part of his job” as a civil engineer.

Sir Donald’s bridge, assembled from welded panels linked by pinned joints and made of steel, came in light units easily carried by a few men. “It was the best thing in that line we ever had,” Lord Montgomery had said. Sir Donald, sketched the original design of his Bailey bridge on the back of an envelope. The War Office accepted the invention in 1941 and all the early experimental work was done in the drawing office and workshops of the Christchurch, Dorset, establishment.