![ww2 bsa bicycles ww2 bsa bicycles](https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/iipcache/136227.jpg)
![ww2 bsa bicycles ww2 bsa bicycles](https://photos.smugmug.com/Hobbies/MILITARY-BICYCLE-MANUALS/i-F9VVNzQ/0/5ce63224/L/bsa01[1]-L.jpg)
When you have those, this bike will be a prize-winner. To finish this one off, you’ll need to find a BSA pump, BSA saddle, BSA handlebar grips (repro ones available), seat post (or paint this one) and BSA sliding pedals. It’s a bike like this – original paint with original transfers intact. The real treasure in the twentieth century is not shiny gleaming paint with freshly applied transfers. There are already too many restored vintage vehicles. But I’m a fully paid-up member of the Oily Rag Club. Obviously chaps can do what they like with their toys, and a shiny restored vintage vehicle can be attractive if it’s done in the right way. Its most interesting feature is the good condition unrestored paintwork with excellent original transfers on the headstock and the seat tube. This BSA Airborne is a recent acquisition. Good unrestored Paintwork with Excellent Original Transfers! The bike was set up in such a way that the seat and handlebars were the first to hit the ground after a landing as bent rims would disable the bike altogether.1939-1945 BSA Airborne Folding Paratroopers Bike (‘Parabike’) R44736 Two enormous wingnuts on the top and bottom part of the frame could be loosened to fold the bike, swinging the front wheel around so it ended up parallel to the rear one. They were intended to give paratroopers a light and discreet mean of transport behind the enemy lines. Over 60,000 Airborne Folding Paratrooper Bicycles were made by the Birmingham Small Arms company between 19. Airborne model was introduced in 1942.Įven though it’s horrible to imagine holding a heavy folding bike and preparing to leap out of a Dakota plane into the war zone, it is exactly what British paratroopers did on the D-Day and many other operations during WW2. bicycles and using them throughout WW1 and in the early years of WW2, until the new B.S.A. Unfavourable individual experiences, however, didn’t stop the army from acquiring large quantities of B.S.A. The first known use of bicycles in actual combat took place during the Jameson Raid – a failed raid against the South African Republic in late 1895 by a British colonial statesman and his troops – in which cyclists were used as messengers. “The advantages claimed for it, even if real, would hardly compensate for these drawbacks,” summed up captain Trampann. According to him, the worst part was that when the bike was folded and strapped onto the back of a soldier, it could not be unstrapped without the assistance of a fellow brother in arms.
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Trapmann also criticized the overall weight, the lack of rigidity and plenty of time needed for folding and unfolding of the early B.S.A. Back in the 1900s, folding bikes were considered useful by the war planners because, in a moment of need, they could be folded and carried on the back of the soldiers – for example, while climbing and proceeding through the rough mountainous terrain.Ĭaptain A. Trapmann serving in the 25th Cyclists Battalion to his superior in December 1908: “I can assure you that for half a dozen excellent reasons nothing would induce me to take one on service or if I did, it would never be folded except when the spring got out of order and it collapsed automatically, which is one of its unexpected habits.”īikes were regarded quite differently from how we see them today as we must understand that MTBs weren’t to be invented for the next seventy years. The benefits of such bicycles for the army were disputable, though, as we can read in a review submitted by Captain A. The bicycles equipped with 24-inch wheels weighed 8 kilograms and included a rack for a rifle. Before World War I, bicycles were already in use by armed forces in Britain, France, Italy, Belgium and Russia. Inspired by the successful usage of folding bikes in France, the British Army followed suit and deployed a folding version of the Pedersen bicycle in the Second Boer War. It was the French military and their folding bikes that aroused a huge interest back in the 1890s.