Rubber Bridge

An Army tank, nosing across a creek near Fort Knox, Ky. on a slithery pontoon bridge, slid off into water up to its turret top. That annoying accident suggested to Lieut. Colonel Thomas Henry Stanley (16th Engineers) that it was about time the Army developed a new kind of pontoon bridge for mechanized warfare. The old bridge of planks on boats had not been radically changed since the Civil War, although as early as 1846 the U.S. Army was experimenting with rubber pontoons.

On a sunny, warm December morning last week, at Fort Benning, Ga., Armored Force officers got their first look at the new bridge. Instead of boats it has collapsible floats of rubber fabric; instead of planks, parallel steel treadways, 15 ft. long.

A fleet of twelve specially built trucks, each carrying a 30-ft. section of bridge, rolled up to the edge of the swift-running Chattahoochee River, unlimbered their derricks. Men with air compressors inflated the rubber floats, others laid down the steel treadways. In 2 hr. 6 min. the treadways were cleared, an armored column started across. Best time for the old bridge at the same spot: 3 hr.

Colonel Stanley's steel-and-rubber bridge carries a heavier load than old-style pontoons, has fewer parts, packs into five-sixths the space. Its pontoons are inflated to a pressure of only one pound to the square inch, are slow to collapse when punctured.

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