“Unsual methods”. Italian notes on Military Structural Engineering in WWII (1943-1944)

The war that lead to the Liberation of Italy was fought to regain territory inch by inch. The road and rail networks were strategic objectives for both sides: the troops who were retreating and those who were advancing. Thousands of bridges were damaged and destroyed, tons of iron, bricks and concrete collapsed into the rivers. The “first aid” given to the structures, led by the Allied Corps of Engineers, was based on salvaging what could be saved. With improvisation, intuition and courage the “standard” procedures of American manuals combined forces with the experience of the Italian artisans. During the SIXXI research (20th Century Structural Engineering: the Italian Contribution), new historical archives were exploited: WWII and its aftermath apperead, evitently, as importants periods for the history of structural engineering. The war for Liberation of Italy (1943-1945) was a unique occasion to test and stress structural design applied to “emergency” scope. An impressive cross-fertilization between the American methods and “know-how” of the Italian technicians featured the “fisrt aid” operations of the Alleys [This papers is framed in the SIXXI project (www.sixxi.eu), thanks to a ERC Adv Grant funding (PI S Poretti, T Iori)]