Bridge-Layers in Action

The refresher training program for the watercraft platoon of the Szentes engineer regiment started with a one-week course inside the classroom and continued at the training area. S/SGT Péter Nagy, the leader of the engineer squad of the platoon is in charge of the training practice. He told us that the training audience of the exercise is made up of well-trained and skilled sappers. The heavy-bridge construction staff are refreshing their technical skills during these four weeks.
Each engineer squad has bridging equipment consisting of four spans: three of the spans have integrally mounted adjustable trestle legs; the fourth (or far-shore) span does not. When the components are assembled, the resulting bridge enables troops to cross even a 40-meter-wide water obstacle, but the components can also be laid separately. The TMM-3 is used for bridging smaller rivers, culverts and marshy terrain sectors. The bridge can be used to negotiate water obstacles up to 3 meter deep, and its load-bearing capacity is 60 tons. The standard time for laying one component is 11 minutes.

Company OC Capt. János Szkalonai and 2nd Lt. Árpád Tóth, the leader of the watercraft platoon told us that the Szentes engineer troops had laid TMM-3s in a real-word situation for the first time in 1996 in Bosnia, while last summer in Kolontár, Hungary they used TMM-3 components to replace a reinforced concrete bridge that had been damaged by red sludge. On the site of the red sludge disaster they had a very difficult job indeed, because the bridge and its treadway got corroded so much that they had to limit its 60-ton load bearing capacity to 3.5 tons. The bridge they laid in Kolontár was functioning for three weeks, after which the low-water bridge-laying company of the Szentes engineer regiment replaced it with an USM-2 bridge that has a metal base and a wooden structure.

 

Photo: Gábor Galovtsik

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