YTB engineers also developed the cantilevered delivery system for the more versatile and robust Bailey Bridge, which enabled Soldiers to construct the bridge on the friendly side of a gap and push it across before engaging the enemy. By the end of the war, Allied combat engineers had erected thousands of these temporary bridges as retreating Axis forces destroyed permanent bridges behind them. VIEW ORIGINAL
82 years ago today, a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii claimed the lives of 2,403 American service members and wounded 1,178 more.
The attack brought the United States into World War II, and led to the creation of what is now U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG).
YPG is the last active Army installation within the World War II-era Desert Maneuver Area that spanned parts of Arizona, California, and Nevada.
Twenty divisions of Soldiers trained at places like Camp Laguna in the blazing hot desert to prepare for combat in North Africa. The Allies defeated the Axis Powers there before their training was finished, so they were deployed to Europe instead.
They were among the first wave that assaulted the beaches at Normandy in June 1944, and helped repel Hitler’s massive, but unsuccessful, last gasp offensive in the Ardennes Forest that bitterly cold winter.
As resistance melted away with the spring thaw, they liberated Nazi death camps inside Germany.
The war effort was greatly aided by the M2 Treadway Bridge, the Army’s first modern tactical pontoon bridge, which had been rapidly tested at Yuma Test Branch prior to the invasion of Normandy.
YTB engineers also developed the cantilevered delivery system for the more versatile and robust Bailey Bridge, which enabled Soldiers to construct a bridge on the friendly side of a gap and push it across before engaging the enemy.
By the end of the war, Allied combat engineers had erected thousands of these temporary bridges as retreating Axis forces destroyed permanent bridges behind them.
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