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...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
