Revolutionising the world of military bridging (with the Bailey) once was a tall order, to pull it off a second time would be nothing short of amazing, but MEXE did it with the Medium Girder Bridge (MGB) A number of design drivers informed the requirement for the MGB, an increasing desire for air portability for example, but what made it [...]
A designer must understand the lead bearing capacity of that bridge, it is a fundamental requirement. The bridge must not be overloaded to a point that it collapses which might have a bearing on the overall success of an operation. To provide assistance to bridge designers, tables of weights of commonly used equipment combinations have been compiled since the early [...]
So this is the last of the first half of this series, looking at the history of UK military bridging. Once past this, it’s on to equipment. Any takers on whether Mexeflotes and ISO containers will sneak in? Iraq – Operation Telic During the initial assault operations in 2003, Iraqi forces had tried to destroy one of the bridges (North [...]
UK military bridging enjoyed several finest hours during WWII and it would be impossible to describe every single operation. Instead, I am going to look at a significant operation in the three theatres of North West Europe, Italy and the Far East. Africa The first Bailey Bridge to be constructed in any operational theatre was at Medjez-el-Bab over the River [...]
As part of Operation MOSHTARAK the Royal Engineers have deployed an explosive clearance system called Python, towed behind the Challenger derived Trojan Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE). Clearing mines and IED’s in front of vehicle or foot patrols, called ‘Op Barma’, is usually a painstaking, dangerous and incredibly difficult task, using Vallon hand held detectors. The people who make up [...]
We thought we would look at a few of the lesser known aspects of the D-Day landings, before, during and after. There are so many aspects of Operation Neptune (the assault phase of Overlord) that are worthy of telling but in this series we look at the weather (before the landings), armoured combat engineering (during the landings) and logistics (after [...]
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