Sir Donald Bailey

Sir Donald Coleman Bailey was an English civil engineer who invented the Bailey bridge. Field Marshal Montgomery is recorded as saying that "without the Bailey bridge, we should not have won the war."

Bailey attended Rotherham Grammar School and The Leys School in Cambridge. He read for a BEng degree at the University of Sheffield and graduated in 1923.

Bailey was a civil servant in the War Office when he designed his bridge. Another engineer, A. M. Hamilton, successfully demonstrated that the Bailey bridge breached a patent on the Callender-Hamilton bridge, though the Bailey bridge was generally regarded as being superior for temporary use. Because the bridge used a pin joining system similar to that used in the Martel Bridge designed by Lt.-General Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel, Hamilton also told the commission the Bailey bridge should be called a 'Martel Mk2', and Martel was later awarded £500 for infringement on the design of his box girder bridge.

Bailey was knighted in 1946 for his bridge design. By this time he was living quietly in Southbourne in Bournemouth. Dorothy Barnes, one of the girls at the Southbourne Crossroads bank, which he used regularly was surprised to learn that her unassuming customer had been knighted. 

He died in Bournemouth in 1985.