The Egyptians had sufficient material to construct eighteen or nineteen bridges across the canal, but the material was of different types.
It included both the old and more modern British Bailey-type sections,
as well as old World War II Soviet TPP bridging (Tyazheli Pontonnyi Park) which had cumbersome alloy pontoons that had to be manhandled into the water. The TPP bridge could be erected at the rate of four feet a minute, which meant that it took two and a half hours to span the canal. Its pontoons and other equipment required 150 vehicles to carry them.
The Egyptians also had sections of the newer Soviet PMP bridge (Pontonno Mostovoy Park) which required only forty vehicles to transport it; it could be erected at the rate of 125 yards in twenty-five minutes. Each section opened into four pontoons after it had been mechanically lowered into the water. Thus it took only thirty to forty minutes to span the canal. An Israeli officer who watched one being erected later said, "It grew across the water like an extending arm." The Egyptians possessed only three such PMP bridges, and, to make up their requirements,
they had obtained quantities of Uniflote bridging, a commercial product known as LPP (Leg Pontonnyi Park). To carry enough to span the canal required 190 vehicles, and this, too, had to be manhandled down to the water's edge.
All sections of the various types of bridging were modified so they were interchangeable with each other. The current Egyptian joke was that this was the first time they had been able to force the communists and the capitalists to work together. All bridges soon were of a mixed composition, as pontoon sections damaged by Israeli aerial activity and shelling were replaced by other types. The pontoons were filled with a foamlike substance to prevent their sinking if damaged, and they all had simple wooden planking trackway over them. The total length of the Egyptian bridging convoys was about 185 miles. The flexibility of the bridges allowed them to be floated to new sites or lashed to the bank. This mobility gave rise to later Israeli claims of sinking many bridges.
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05-06-2012, 08:51
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