This 1944 cover image is one of the first photos to be published of a Bailey Bridge, a piece of equipment that proved invaluable to the Allies in World War II, and has since gone into wide use globally.
With German forces having heavily fortified the French coast and every French port by the middle of 1944 during World War II, the Allies faced the difficult problem of how to unload all the troops, weapons, ammunition, fuel and other supplies on the Normandy beachheads.