Bailey Bridge Group Build

[Adrian Harris]

Thanks Pete, I may take a cycle over there later this afternoon.

Adrian.

[Pete Mallett]

Just checked the tables and have found that I made a basic error in my last post (which I have now corrected) a Single-Single Bailey, measuring 80 feet in lenght is in fact a class 12 load, equating to about 12 tons. Can't keep it all in my head...that's what the books are for

I'd be interested to see nay photos you might be able to snap!

Pete

[Adrian Harris]

Found another picture which says it is a Mabey Bailey Bridge, with a load capacity of 2 tons.

Adrian.

[Michael Cecil]

Fascinating discussion. By the 1960s, Thomas Storey (Engineers) Ltd were the sole manufacturers of Bailey Bridge. Their handbook, 'Bailey Uniflote Handbook' dated 1962 (first ed) and 1968 (third ed) shows them to be still independent in 1962, and one of the Acrow Group of companies by 1968, though both editions were published by Acrow Press which may be significant as to the real owners in 1962. The handbook covers both Bailey Bridges and the Uniflote flotation system which could be assembled into rafts, or used as bridge support floats.

Sir Donald Bailey was listed as 'consultant exclusively to Thos. Storey (Engineers) Ltd', and he wrote the foreword for both editions (probably Ed 2 as well, but I don't have a copy of that), signing himself 'Inventor of the Bailey Bridge'.

The handbook is highly detailed and full of drawings and diagrams with measurements. The Loddon bridge with the extra reinforcement would be an 'SSR' - Single-Single Reinforced - according to the handbook.

Pretty interested in the new Bailey model from Armortek, I have to admit....

Mike

[Pete Mallett]

Found another picture which says it is a Mabey Bailey Bridge, with a load capacity of 2 tons

I'm pretty sure that just means the Bailey bridge was made and erected by Mabey's, of course I could be wrong. Somewhere I have some Bailey bridge promotional material that was given to me by a former employee of Mabeys, who was also a former Sapper. I shall have a look through to see if their are any design issues with it, but from my tables I would expect a bridge in that configuration to carry more than 2 Tons, the FBE bridges were a basic Class 9 and those things floated on folding, canvas boats!

'Bailey Uniflote Handbook' dated 1962 (first ed) and 1968 (third ed)

I have copies of both the First Edition and the Third Edition (the Second edition came out in 1966) and there's some differences between the two but basically put the 1968 edition has 'more complete' info. Fascinating books but they are concerned with post-war Civil uses of Bailey bridge.

Pretty interested in the new Bailey model from Armortek, I have to admit..

You know you want one, they are highly addictive and proper grown-up Engineering too! Did you know that Britian had a fledgling Space Program in 1950's, called the Skylark? They launched the rockets from Australia and they used Bailey Bridging, built vertically, as the Launch Towers! It's been used as Scaffolding walkways, bolted around the tops of Skyscrappers in the US and as Formers in building dams in Canada. It has been used for far more than it's original,back of an envelope design allowed for! They've even made Suspension bridges out of it and the first RE Sapper officer to build a Bailey Suspension Bridge was the chap who went on to design Sydney Opera House!

[Michael Cecil]

Danish Jorn Utzon was an RE officer?

Mike

[Pete Mallett]

Danish Jorn Utzon was an RE officer?

No, but Lt-Col Henry Ingham Ashworth was and it was he who headed up the design committee and was responsible for hiring Utzon, and tried his best to keep Utzon on-board after the he had resigned! I might have been more correct if I'd said was involved in the design rather than ascribing the whole design to him

Incidentally, the fact that Utzon was Danish would not have precluded him from being an RE officer, especially during WWII when Britain accepted so many nationalities into its armed forces. I am currently researching the life of a Russian Nobleman who fought as a Cossack Cavalry officer in the Russian Army during WWI, then fought the Bolsheviks, fled to Egypt where he enlisted as a private soldier in the British Army and Served with the Australian Light Horse in Allenby's final Cavalry charge against the Turks. He later transferred to a Hants regiment as a SNCO and finished the war in a Cambridge hospital. Post WWI he was serving as an Officer-Translator with the British Siberian Mission to Vladivostock (Fighting the Bolshevik's again), by the 1930's he was Territorial with the Indian Army, whilst working as a mines Engineer in India. On the outbreak of WWII he returned to England and joined the RE and served in an RE Squadron attached to 7th Armoured in the Western Desert and with 11th Armoured in NW Europe following D-Day. He was killed a couple weeks before the war ended and just after his 45th Birthday. Throughout his whole military career he never rose above the rank of Lt and he never wanted to either, he just liked being up the sharp end! If a Russian Cossack can do all of that within the British Empire forces than I think we could probaly have found room for the odd Dane as well

[Michael Cecil]

Thanks for clarifying that: I'd not heard that said before, so was surprised by the post. Now it all makes sense. Ashworth was an interesting character.

What was your research subject man doing with the ALH (besides riding a horse)? Pete, you are full of surprises! What do you regard as 'Allenby's final cavalry charge against the Turks'? I'm curious (it is a bit off topic here, I know, but what the heck? It's all interesting.)

I looked up Skylark, too, in Peter Morton's mammoth book 'Fire across the Desert', which has a couple of small images of the Skylark launch tower. Apparently the 35 ton launch tower was assembled from Bailey components at Woolwich Arsenal, then dis-assembled and taken to Woomera. Over 200 Skylark sounding rockets were fired during the course of the joint Anglo-Australian project, with varying payloads of instruments for investigating the upper atmosphere. Quite a novel use of Bailey, possibly the only time it has been used as a rocket launcher.

Mike

[Pete Mallett]

What do you regard as 'Allenby's final cavalry charge against the Turks'? I'm curious (it is a bit off topic here, I know, but what the heck? It's all interesting.)

Meggido, but I'm sure you'll have different ideas I'm not a hundred percent certain how he got attached to the ALH yet and I'm still trying to track down his service records from Singapore to Egypt (not on his attestation papers when he joined the Hants, late in 1918) but I know he used to have paperwork on it because he shared it with the Naturalisation board when he applied for British Citizenship, sadly they did not have photocopies back then and no copies were kept of the originals so all I know for sure, at this stage, is that they were submitted, accepted, approved and returned to him. Very frustraing but all part of a researchers fun!

Pete, you are full of surprises!

I'm going to take that as a compliment mate, especially as my Children are forever telling me that I'm actually "full of useless gobbets of informations"! I've been listening to that particular description for quite some time now, however out eldest is curently in his second year of a History degree course and over the summer he's been regaling the rest of the family with how often my 'gobbets of useless information' have come in handy in Semminar discussions and Essays...I've only waited twenty years for that kind of vindication

I guess I'm a wee bit like the Hybrids who control a Cylon Basestar. Most people see my utterings as mindless drivel but there are one or two crazy people who think all this drivel is actually insightful wisdom!

[Michael Cecil]

Pete, of course it was a compliment - from one 'fact sponge' to another!

I assume you plugged his name into the NAA's Recordsearch, just in case he has an AIF file, and the AWM's 'people' search in case there is an image of him? He does seem to have moved around a lot, so there is always the chance he will pop up in places like that.

Mike

[Pete Mallett]

Hi Mike,

yeah already been through the NAA and the AWM, and other Australian resources. His service records for the period haven't turned up and I rather suspect that they are buried deep in the colonial records from Singpaore and Egypt which are located in the bowels of the ever unhelpful British LIbrary here in London!

Tell you what though, if you're feeling adventurous you mcould nip into the AWM and see if you can get a PDF copy of a wee booklet they have there, that I can find no where else. It's onlyn 16 pages long....

Collection type: Library
Title: Bailey Bridge / by command of the Army Council.
Call Number: 623.04 B154
Author: Great Britain. War Office.; Great Britain. Army Council.;
Document type: Monograph
Year: 1942.
Pagination: 16 p., 16 p. of plates : ill. ; 22 cm.
Publisher: War Office,

[Michael Cecil]

Well, Pete, I'd be happy to oblige, but I'm located in Spokane, Washington State, USA, not the ACT.

Mike

[Pete Mallett]

Aha, I see! Your knowledge of all things Oz led me to assume otherwise, that'll teach me to make hasty assumptions!

[Adrian Harris]

I managed to get down to my local bridge and, following analysis of my photos by our tame Bailey Bridge Expert, Pete has identified it as a Mabey Compact 200, so a "son of" Bailey rather than an actual one.

He has also located a fantastic animation from Mabey on the method of launching this model of bridge:

[BBvideo=560,315][/BBvideo]

Needs to have the sound on for the best experience

Adrian.

[Pete Mallett]

Adrian,
I think it's a Mabey Compact 200 based on the pics and what you've told me about its load bearing abilities. IIRC the Compact 200, as it names suggests, was used for lighter loads. The Bridge that came after the Compact 200 was the Mabey Logisitcs Support Bridge and the two look very similar. However, IIRC (and I'm no Mabey expert) the LSB used the Bailey Super Panel which was a reinforced (on the diagonals rather than the chords) Bailey panel, and which was interchangeable with original Bailey Panels in everyway! Also, I think the Compact 200 was for civilian supply whilst the LSB was aimed primarily at the Military, hence its greater load bearing abilities. I'm going to have to dig out my Mabey research to check all that though!

This animation for the building and launching of the Compact 200 is also pretty accurate for the launching of a Bailey Bridge. The laying out of the approach to the river is exactly the same, as is building the Bailey bridge on rollers, with a special launching nose, to guide the bridge into place on the far bank, where rocking rollers will be waiting to take the bridge as it falls on that side. The Bailey was designed to sag when in-situ, but this sag needed to be counteracted during launching, hence the special launching nose which,as you can see from the animation, projected upwards so as to clear the far bank. Calculations for the size of the launching nose were based on width to be gaped as well as room on rear bank for building the bridge (among other things). Again there were tables for this worked out in advance by the EBE (Experimental Bridging Establishment, which later became MEXE).

The original Basset-Lowke Bailey Bridge Training model came with all the necessary rollers and ancillary equipment to train the Sapper's in the art of launching and the mathematics for launching the BL- model Bailey are very near identical to the real deal. They had to be if the training was to be in any way effective.

Incidentally Adrian, you should be able to wrap 'video' tags around that yourtube animation and make it appear directly in your post for viewing.