SHOOTING STAR
George Patchett was a motorcycle engineer who went from bad-boy beginnings to live a life like a hero from the pages of Boys’ Own, but his most famous design wasn’t a bike – it was a machine gun
Which motorcycle engineer would you say had the greatest impact on the world during the 20th century? Soichiro Honda, for creating the Honda Cub, which put 50 million riders on the road between 1958 and 1999? Or Walter Kaaden, whose modern two-stroke provided super-cheap transport for hundreds of millions during the last four decades of the century?
Or how about George William Patchett? During the 1920s and ’30s Patchett worked for Brough Superior, Mcevoy, Belgian marque FN and Jawa, designing and racing all kinds of machinery. However, his most famous machine was used in the World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Falklands, the Iran-iraq War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War and numerous other conflicts.
Following his work with motorcycles, Patchett engineered the Patchett machine-carbine and the Sterling sub-machine gun, one of the most effective automatic firearms ever made. The Sterling was first used in the final months of World War II and was deployed by more than 50 countries, some of which still use the weapon today. The gun has also starred in movies – from You Only Live Twice to Star Wars, in which Imperial Stormtroopers use converted Sterlings to attack the Galactic Republic. The Hollywood connection is quite fitting for a man who lived his life like a Boys’ Own hero, although his early adventures into the world of motorcycles were of a more villainous inclination.
Patchett was born around the turn of the century, and in his youth was a sharp operator who lived on his considerable wits – which led him into an early career as a bike thief. He didn’t just steal any old bikes – he stole Triumphs, specifically in pairs. At that time Triumph engine numbers were stamped across the halves of the crankcases, so Patchett would steal two similar machines, strip the engines and swap the two crankcase halves to create a pair of engines whose numbers weren’t recorded by the police as stolen. The trick worked until the unsuspecting owner of one of Patchett’s stolen, modified bikes took the machine along to his dealer, who spotted that the engine number wasn’t on Triumph’s books. Patchett ended up in borstal.
While serving time at His Majesty’s pleasure in Nottingham, Patchett wrote to George Brough, asking for a job at the nearby Brough Superior factory. Brough was sympathetic to people whose lives had taken a wrong turn, so when Patchett was released from borstal he got the job. He soon gained a reputation as an excellent mechanic and rider, on road and race track. When, in 1924, Brough launched his legendary SS100 – basically a road-going version of Bert Le Vack’s land-speed record breaker – the first publication to get a test ride was The Motor Cycle. However, the paper’s test rider was too frightened to ride the bike flat-out, so Patchett climbed aboard and went hurtling through a sweeping 90mph curve with both hands off the handlebars, proving the machine’s superior handling. Race successes with the SS100 followed, including victory in the 1925 Welsh TT on Pendine Sands in South Wales.
Patchett’s growing abilities as rider and engineer soon had others keen on his talents. In 1925 he quit Brough Superior to establish a new marque, along with Rolls-royce engineer Michael Mcevoy and Archie Birkin, the bike-racing son of a wealthy Midlands industrialist. Patchett was competitions manager and engineer at the Derby-based Mcevoy factory, where he worked alongside Mcevoy,
while the money came from Birkin. The plan was to produce bespoke motorcycles to out-perform Brough Superior, so Mcevoy and Patchett were indefatigable in their search for more horsepower. They became pioneers in the supercharging of motorcycle engines, and in April 1926 Patchett became the first man to race a supercharged bike at Brooklands. His 980cc Mcevoy JAP V-twin used a Roots supercharger, geared to run at 1.44 times engine speed.
Supercharging a V-twin is tricky, because it’s difficult to find the right compromise between compression and boost on each cylinder. Mcevoy thought they’d found a way around the problem by using a two-litre buffer chamber between the carburettors and supercharger to damp out pressure fluctuations. In fact the buffer limited the blower’s potency, but nonetheless Patchett broke numerous records and won plenty of races with the supercharged Mcevoy, lapping the Surrey speedbowl fast enough to become one of the first recipients of a coveted Brooklands Gold Star.
Mcevoy looked to have a promising future, its model range expanding to include trick little lightweights powered by 172cc Villiers two-stroke engines. But the company ran into trouble when Birkin lost his life during practice for the 1927 Isle of Man TT. He was riding through Rhencullen on his Mcevoy 500 when he had to swerve to avoid an oncoming van (the roads weren’t closed to traffic during practice sessions in those days) and died in the ensuing crash. Without Birkin’s financial resources, Mcevoy closed its doors – but not before Mcevoy and Patchett had designed a 500cc inline four, which they exhibited at the 1929 Olympia motorcycle show.
Patchett moved to Belgium to work for FN (Fabrique Nationale), manufacturer of motorcycles, including a futuristic shaft-drive inline-four, and guns, including the pistol used to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. Here he met American Val Browning – of the Fn-owned Browning Arms Company – who introduced him to weapons engineering.
‘IN APRIL 1926 PATCHETT BECAME THE FIRST TO RACE A SUPERCHARGED BIKE AT BROOKLANDS. HIS 980cc MCEVOY JAP V-TWIN USED A ROOTS SUPERCHARGER, GEARED TO RUN AT 1.44 TIMES ENGINE SPEED’
Patchett – a dashing character with “an Irish sense of humour and Belgian bonhomie” – was moving up in the world. Brough Superior engineer Ted Lester recalled meeting Patchett dressed in an immaculate pinstripe suit, Homberg hat, spats, white silk scarf and cane. “George informed us in a heavily upper-class accent that he had met the widow of a French millionaire and was living the life of a country squire on a large estate in northern France,” said Lester.
Patchett was now racing manager at FN, but his employers wouldn’t give him the freedom he wanted in the design room, so when he got talking to Czech engineer František Janeāek at the 1930 Olympia show he ended up accepting a job offer to join Janeāek’s fledgling motorcycle company, Jawa. Jawa was another manufacturer that mixed motorcycles with armaments, like FN, BSA (British Small Arms), Royal
Enfield, Zundapp (which started life as Zunder und Apparatebau, manufacturing detonators) and others.
Janeāek had spent World War I fighting on the Italian front, where he designed numerous weapons. After the war he started manufacturing munitions and machine guns in Prague. When demand waned, he retooled his factory for motorcycle production. Initially he made German Wanderer machines under licence, hence the name Jawa (for Janeāek and Wanderer), but he realised he needed to sell his own machines to really succeed.
Patchett went to work, creating a range of road and racing motorcycles that established Jawa as a respected brand. Most successful was a lightweight road bike, powered by the same 172cc two-stroke used by Mcevoy. Patchett had got back in touch with his old contacts at Villiers and
set about engineering a beautifully neat chassis with leadinglink forks and a square-section cradle frame made from pressed steel. This excellent, low-cost two-stroke increased Jawa’s sales almost tenfold. Thus Patchett’s abilities secured the future of the company.
Patchett also created a range of four-stroke Jawa road and race bikes, fronted by an impressive 500 single of unit construction. He never stopped looking forward, using dynastart (an early form of electric starter), water cooling, supercharging, double overhead camshafts, shaft drive, telescopic forks and other advanced technologies in his machines. Patchett and his Jawa team-mates raced these machines throughout Europe. In Czechoslovakia they contested a 2000-kilometre endurance race on open roads, during which Patchett averaged an astonishing 76mph. In 1932 he took Jawa to the Isle of Man TT for the first time, where life was particularly difficult for a manufacturer based 1100 miles away.
“The problem is that if we have trouble in practice it’s almost impossible to obtain replacement parts in time for the races,” Patchett told British journalists in Douglas. “There is no telephone link with the mainland, detailing spares requirements by telegram in the Czech language is out of the question and it takes four days for a letter to reach Prague. Even then, the nearest aerodrome to the Isle of Man with customs clearing facilities is Croydon airport [the UK’S only international airport in the 1930s].”
As it happened, Patchett failed to finish the 1932 Senior TT, but the following year Ginger Wood rode a Jawa to eighth in the race. In 1935 the company came within one dropped valve of beating the Nazi-backed German team to win the ISDT, staged in the Bavarian Alps with the stages lined with swastika flags. Going into the final stage, the Czechs led the Bmw-equipped Germans, led by Ernst Henne, when one of its bikes broke its engine.
Jawa was a successful and expanding motorcycle marque, with a renewed interest in weapons manufacturing, because war once again loomed on the horizon. Alongside his motorcycle activities, Patchett developed an interest in machine guns, working alongside Janeāek Junior, whose speciality was anti-tank weapons.
‘PATCHETT CREATED A RANGE OF FOUR-STROKE JAWA ROAD AND RACE BIKES, FRONTED BY AN IMPRESSIVE 500 SINGLE OF UNIT CONSTRUCTION’
When Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Patchett knew he had to get out quick. Winston Churchill was involved in extricating him from Prague, because Britain was in desperate need of sub-machine gun knowhow. Legend has it the last thing Patchett did before fleeing the city was to fling the prototype of Janeāek Junior’s latest anti-tank device over the wall of the British embassy. He then embarked on a mad dash home to Britain, carrying microfilm of Janeāek’s weapons designs. The journey via Germany and the Netherlands involved a blood-curdling drive across frontiers and a wild flight in a light aeroplane.
During the war Janeāek’s anti-tank device was fitted to British 40mm anti-tank guns in armoured cars and to Hawker Hurricane fighters. The gadget was nicknamed the Littlejohn (the English translation of Janeāek). Patchett was installed at the Sterling Armaments Company based in Dagenham, Essex, where he produced a prototype 9mm sub-machine gun to meet a new specification demanded by the British military. His design, which included various patented mechanisms, was ready for trials in early 1944, at which it impressed with its accuracy and reliability.
The Patchett machine-carbine was used in the final months of the World War II, by special forces and airborne troops. It’s believed the gun was first fired in anger during the disastrous Operation Market Garden at Arnhem. Renamed the Sterling, the gun was fully adopted by the British Army, beating a rival design from BSA, largely because it was so effective in urban and jungle warfare.
Almost 300,000 Sterlings were made in the UK alone, one of which was presented to Churchill, complete with silver plaque engraved with his ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech, plus 500 rounds of ammunition. However, there was a sting in the tale for Patchett. The Ministry of Defence decided not to pay him for his patents, so Patchett and Sterling sued the Crown through the MOD.
The Crown invoked the Official Secrets Act in its efforts to deny the gun’s creators their money, although finally in 1968 the High Court of Justice found in Patchett’s and Sterling’s favour, awarding them £117,000 each – which was a lot of money at a time when the average house price in the UK was £3160. That same day Patchett resigned from Sterling before retiring a wealthy man to Cannes in the south of France with his French wife and their two children. He died in 1978.