Sir Donald Coleman Bailey
Engineer
b. Sept. 15, 1901, Rotherham
d. May 5, 1985, Bournemouth, Dorset
Donald Coleman Bailey was a British engineer who invented the Bailey bridge, which was of
great military value in World War II. Marshall Montgomery said of it "that without the
Bailey Bridge we would not have won the war"
. A Bailey bridge is made of prefabricated
lattice steel. The bridge can be assembled easily and quickly from standard parts.
Bailey was born in Rotherham in 1901. He graduated from the University of Sheffield. He worked for a time in the railway industry, but then in 1929 he joined the Ministry of Supply being employed in the Experimental Bridging Establishment. When World War II broke out, he had already developed an idea for a military bridge. In late 1940, at a conference on the problem of providing temporary spans capable of taking heavy loading, he put forward his concept of a strong but relatively light steel truss that could be prefabricated in sections. It was at once approved. The characteristics of the Bailey bridge were standardisation and simplicity of panels, readiness of assembly in the field, capacity for additional strengthening by doubling or tripling the truss girders, and adaptability to long spans with the aid of pontoons. A Bailey pontoon bridge over the Maas River in The Netherlands spanned 4,000 feet (1,200 m).
Bailey was knighted in 1946.
