The remains of the Remagen bridge at Erpel on the Eastern side of the Rhine river, Germany.
The Ludendorff Bridge was originally built during World War I as a means of moving troops and logistics west over the Rhine to reinforce the Western Front. The bridge was designed by Karl Wiener an architect from Mannheim. It was 325 meters long, had a clearance of meters above the normal water level of the Rhine, and its highest point measured meters. The bridge carried two railway tracks and a pedestrian walkway. During World War II, one track was planked over to allow vehicular traffic. The Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen—the last standing on the Rhine—was captured by soldiers of the 9th Armored Division on 7 March 1945, during Operation Lumberjack. Although German engineers had mined the bridge before the American approach, the fuses had been cut by two Polish engineers forcibly conscripted to the Wehrmacht, in Silesia. In the immediate days after the bridge's capture, the German Army Command desperately attempted to destroy the bridge by bombing it and having divers mine it. The Allies attempted to repair the bridge by laying pontoon bridges alongside, but despite the best efforts, on 17 March 1945, ten days after its capture, the Bridge at Remagen collapsed, killing twenty-eight soldiers. However, because the pontoon bridges and other secured crossing points that had supplanted the bridge, its loss was neither tactically nor strategically significant. Still, the Ludendorff Bridge remained important as the first point at which Allies crossed the Rhine to enter Germany.
Size: 4073px × 5302px
Location: Erpel, Neuweid, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Photo credit: © David Davies / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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