For related uses of "pontoon", see Float (nautical). For other uses, see Pontoon (disambiguation).
Pontoon bridge
United States Army troops cross the Rhine on a heavy pontoon bridge during Operation Plunder, March 1945[1]
Carries
Pedestrian, automobile, truck
Span range
Short to long
Material
Various: steel, concrete, boats, barrels, plastic floats, appropriate decking material
Movable
Generally not, but may have movable sections for watercraft passage
Design effort
low
Falsework required
No
A pontoon bridge (or ponton bridge), also known as a floating bridge, uses floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel. The buoyancy of the supports limits the maximum load that they can carry.
Most pontoon bridges are temporary and used in wartime and civil emergencies. There are permanent pontoon bridges in civilian use that can carry highway traffic. Permanent floating bridges are useful for sheltered water crossings if it is not considered economically feasible to suspend a bridge from anchored piers. Such bridges can require a section that is elevated or can be raised or removed to allow waterborne traffic to pass.
Pontoon bridges have been in use since ancient times and have been used to great advantage in many battles throughout history, such as the Battle of Garigliano, the Battle of Oudenarde, the crossing of the Rhine during World War II, the Iran–Iraq War's Operation Dawn 8, and most recently, in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, after crossings over the Dnipro River had been destroyed.
^Beck, Alfred M., et al., The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany Archived 2018-10-16 at the Wayback Machine, Center of Military History (U.S. Army), 1985. The bridge was built by the 85th Engineer Heavy Combat Battalion on March 26, 1945 200 feet downstream from the demolished Ernst Ludwig highway bridge. It was named the Alexander Patch Bridge after the Seventh Army commander, General Alexander Patch. A stone tower of the former bridge is visible on the opposite bank.
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finished building a M1940 aluminum-alloy treadway bridge and a M1938 pontoonbridge followed by a Bailey bridge across the Rhine. Over 125,000 troops established...
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Global Information![United States Army troops cross the Rhine on a heavy pontoon bridge during Operation Plunder, March 1945[1]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/US_Army_crossing_the_Rhine_on_heavy_ponton_bridge_at_Worms%2C_March%2C_1945.png/240px-US_Army_crossing_the_Rhine_on_heavy_ponton_bridge_at_Worms%2C_March%2C_1945.png)