People of Note
Sir Donald Coleman Bailey
Sir Donald Coleman Bailey, British engineer who invented the Bailey bridge, which was of great military value in World War II, was born September 15, 1901 at Rotherham, Yorkshire.
He was the only child of Joseph Henry Bailey, commercial cashier, and his wife, Caroline Coleman. After attending Rotherham Grammar School and the Leys School, Cambridge, he went to Sheffield University, where he took several degrees culminating in a Doctorate of Engineering.
He was employed by Rowntree & Co. of York, the civil engineer's department at the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway, and the City engineer's department in Sheffield before joining the War Office in 1928 as a civil engineering designer at Christchurch, Bournemouth.
Bailey was responsible for the design, development and manufacture of a variety of military bridging equipment, pontoons, cranes, pile-driving rigs and trailers to transport them.
When World War II broke out, he had already developed an idea for a military bridge in 1936, and in late 1940, at a conference on the problem of providing temporary spans capable of taking heavy loading, his concept of a strong but relatively light steel truss that could be prefabricated in sections was at once approved. The characteristics of the Bailey bridge were standardization and simplicity of panels, readiness of assembly in the field, capacity for additional strengthening by doubling or tripling the truss girders, and adaptability to long spans with the aid of pontoons. A Bailey pontoon bridge over the Maas River in The Netherlands spanned 4,000 feet (1,200 m).
After the War Office had approved the bridge in 1941 and ordered mass production, all the structural engineering firms were already busy on other urgent war work, but because the parts were small, it was possible to spread the work between about 650 makers of windows, bedsteads, greenhouses, etc.and by November 1941 the bridge began to reach the troops. By 1847 about 2000 Bailey Bridges had been built.
Bailey was appointed OBE in 1944 and knighted in 1946 when he was promoted to senior principal scientific officer and became assistant director of the Military Engineering Experimental Establishment, at Christchurch, where he later became director. The royal commission on awards to inventors awarded him £12,000 in 1948 for his work on the bridge. He became deputy chief scientific officer, Ministry of Supply, in 1952. Bailey served on a number of technical committees, giving his name to the Bailey committee on house interiors (1952–3). He was appointed dean of the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham in 1962 where he stayed until retirementin 1966.
In 1933 Bailey married Phyllis Amy (died 1971), daughter of Charles Frederick Andrew, a retired farmer, of Wick, Bournemouth. They had one son, Richard Henry. In 1979 Bailey married Mildred Stacey, his housekeeper, a widow, the daughter of Herbert William Crees, licensed victualler.
Bailey died at St. Leonards Hospital, Bournemouth 5 May 1985, aged 83. His first wife Phyliss died Apr 10, 1971
Source Oxford DNB, Times Newspaper.
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