US Navy walking barge

The walking barge was an experimental US Navy amphibious craft reported by Popular Science in May 1948. Designed by John T. Tucker, superintendent of the Navy's proving ground at Port Hueneme, California, where it was being tested, it could carry a 60-ton load over surf, mud flats, banks, beaches and even sand dunes.

Design

The 60 ft (18.3 m) steel hull was made of three compartmented pontoons. In the water it was driven by a single stern propeller powered from twin diesel tank engines. On reaching shore the propeller folded up out of harm's way and the barge began to walk: the centre pontoon was raised 17 inches (43 cm) and moved forward 10 ft (3 m), then the two outer pontoons, which were decked over to carry the load, were lifted and moved forward in turn. Hydraulic steering pads at the rear of the outer pontoons let it turn in little more than its own length, and vertical fins at the front of each pontoon gave grip in mud.

Tucker suggested it could lay sectional road mats to form landing ramps or airstrips, help build bridges and piers, serve as an armoured mobile fortress in shore assaults, or provide year-round heavy transport over Arctic tundra.

History

A reader's letter to Popular Science after the article pointed out that a Seabee unit on Oahu had already built a leapfrog barge during the war, with hand-bent gear raceways and gears cast in its own foundry, though it was finished too late to be used. The magazine replied that this had been valuable groundwork on the original walking barge, kept secret until then for security reasons. A later note in the archive suggests the wartime machine was based on an earlier patent by Tucker.