In the early 1940s, it became apparent that a better way of transferring men and equipment between ships and the shore was needed.
A report written in 1935 would provide the answer the US military were seeking.
Observations were made of segmented steel pontoons supporting the ‘Yuba’, a gold dredge built by Bethlehem Steel in California in 1937, to facilitate shipping to remote sites.
Based on those observations, Captain John Laycock of the US Navy began experimenting with cigar boxes and kite sticks in 1940-41, which proved the concept was sound.
Contracts were awarded and by September 1941, the first segmented steel pontoons were delivered to the Navy along with the necessary hardware to connect the boxes together. And that’s where the amazing flexibility and versatility of the pontoons began to take shape.
As America’s role WWII took began to take shape, the 5 x 7 x 5 feet, 2000 pound pontoons were churned out in their tens of thousands, flat packed, and shipped to both the European and Pacific Theatres.
Once reassembled on site they were made into everything from barges, lighters, tugboats and ferries, to dry docks, causeways, wharfs, seaplane ramps, floating cranes, bridge spans and much more. Even a floating airfield was experimented with.
On Santo, pontoons were used throughout the island for a wide range of tasks. The largest of these was at Pallikulo Bay where a huge pontoon wharf was constructed for the unloading of freighters bringing supplies to the island.
They were also used as water carriers for the construction of the airfields, barges for transporting aircraft to the airfields and even header tanks for the showers at the Seabee camps.
The Sarakata River road bridge also used two large spans of pontoons bolted together to make up the box girders that the road deck was constructed upon. Quite an accomplishment given the pontoon’s origin when a Navy captain began playing around with cigar boxes and kite sticks.
