The motorcycles that went to war
The success of motorcycles on a host of duties during the First World War led to an even greater recognition of their usefulness in the 1939-45 conflict. Pete Kelly delves into Mortons Motorcycle Archive and other sources to bring a flavour of the times.
While it is impossible to underestimate the importance of motorcycles to military forces in both World Wars, Martin Gegg, in his book War Bike, British Military Motorcycling 1899-1949, published seven years ago to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the unfortunately tagged ‘War to end war,’ points out that the first gun-mounted ‘motorcycle’ on record was a De Dion Boutonpowered Beeston Quad (a trike adapted to four wheels) carrying a Maxim machine gun which its maker, Frederick Simms, demonstrated on
Richmond Common in 1899. Sadly, it did not acquit itself too successfully in the Boer War which lasted from 1899 until 1902.
Prior to the appearance of that machine gun carrier, the 26th Middlesex (Cyclist) Volunteer
Reserve had used a motorised tricycle to tow a Maxim gun during Easter manoeuvres at Aldershot – and Martin has the picture to prove it!
The best-remembered war bikes were, of course, those used by dispatch riders and, although by March 1907, it was already being argued that motorcycles would be a great way to transport ‘a man armed with a rifle,’ Lieutenant
Albert H Trapmann of the volunteer cyclists’ reserve thought otherwise. “A motorcycle would be useless for scouting,” he wrote, “because its advent can be heard far off, and its weight and general unhandiness
[sic] make it cumbersome to turn round in a narrow road or bypath; it cannot be lifted over hedges and stiles or dropped in a ditch, and like all mechanically propelled vehicles, it is not even always reliable.”
Remaining intensely loyal to the pedal cycle, the lieutenant suggested that motorcycle dispatch riders could usefully link up with cycle units, citing an exercise in 1906 in which a motorcyclist took a dispatch from cyclists who were exhausted after a 60-mile ‘march,’ and delivered it to headquarters via a long route skirting enemy lines. But, by the start of the 1914-18 conflict, the role of military motorcycles had become far more important than Trapmann could ever have imagined.
In a chapter entitled The Clouds Gather, Martin Gegg tells how, by 1914, the Mechanical Transport Committee had established Triumph, Phelon & Moore and Douglas as preferred suppliers. The committee had been attending events such as the TT races and ACU trials, evaluating machines such as the 6hp Zenith and buying a twincylinder 3¼hp Lea-Francis when the war intervened. Scott, Sunbeam, BSA, Clyno and others also played significant wartime roles.
Two of the most significant players were Triumph, which provided no fewer than 30,000 550cc three-speed Model H singles, and Douglas, which delivered more than 20,000 348cc two-speed flat twins and over 5000 of the larger 595cc three-speed models.
The chilling progression from mobilisation in August 1914 to life amid the barren landscape of the front line, and the developments in military motorcycles that followed, are all faithfully recorded in
Martin Gegg’s book, which he was inspired to write by the Brooklands Motorcycle Volunteer Team after starting with little more than a few notes about the testing of military motorcycles at the historic circuit. With its 116 pages and more than 70 illustrations, War Bike is still available via the internet, and remains a great read for anyone interested in the vital wartime roles of these machines.
Another riveting book on the subject, also published in 2014, is Michael Carragher’s San Fairy Ann, Motorcycles and British Victory 1914-1918.
‘San Fairy Ann’ was how British soldiers on the Western Front pronounced the French phrase
‘ca ne fait rien’, which roughly translated means ‘it doesn’t matter’ – an expression of indifference to, or resigned acceptance of, the terrifying state of affairs in which they found themselves.
The use of motorcycles became so important during that conflict that, while the British forces that went to France in August 1914 took just 166 machines, by the end of the war in November 1918 that number had risen to 14,464.
The dispatch riders who risked life and limb to deliver vital messages over the crumbling pot-holed excuses for roads have become the forgotten heroes of that bloody conflict in which countless thousands of young men made the ultimate sacrifice.
The manoeuvrability of both the solo machine and sidecar combination made them ideal for a number of roles, including the transport and release of messenger pigeons, as ‘motor machine guns’ with boxes of ammunition stowed aboard, and even as ambulances.
Michael describes the courage of one such rider by the name of Roger West, who rode his own bike more than 1000 miles trying to volunteer his services before finally being commissioned ‘for six months or the duration of the war’. Plunged straight into the war effort, he rode his Army-issue bike night and day, sleeping in barns, carrying out roadside repairs and adjustments, and once mending a puncture within 150 yards of the enemy.
Dog tired after riding through German forces and being fired upon, and with the British in full retreat, he tried to snatch a few hours’ sleep on straw, but received such a serious insect bite to one of his feet that it would no longer fit inside his riding boot, so he was forced to wear a carpet slipper instead.
Despite his festering foot, after learning that charges placed on a bridge separating the British forces from an advancing enemy just 10 miles away had failed to detonate, the dispatch rider was allowed to return and try to blow it up. After collecting a stone of guncotton from the Royal Engineers, and with a volunteer officer astride the carrier cushioning the fresh charges in his breast pocket, Roger West bravely rode back through the retreating ranks to finish the job.
The riders used lots of ingenuity to keep their bikes on the move, with frame breakages and punctures being common, but if problems could not be solved on the spot, the bikes were collected for repair. During the retreat from Mons, though, there wasn’t even time to change an oiled-up spark plug, so a dispatch rider’s mount would be torched deliberately to deprive the enemy of an asset.
Michael’s well-researched 286page semi-hardback was published by FireStep Publishing of Brighton and is certainly worth looking out for.
From the moment war broke out, the pages of Motor Cycling
(first published by Iliffe in 1902) and The Motor Cycle (launched by The Temple Press in 1903) became full of wartime topics, and the advertisements took on encouraging wartime themes.
Although Motor Cycling had been the first to publish, it was discontinued after just a few months, but reappeared on a more permanent basis in 1909. Graham Walker, who edited it from 1938 until 1954, had been a First World War dispatch rider before embarking upon a successful racing career on Rudge, Sunbeam and Norton, winning the Ulster Grand Prix in
1928 and the 250cc Lightweight TT in 1931. He became president of the TT Riders’ Association, and, of course, was the father of Murray, whom we also lost recently.
A wonderful article from The
Motor Cycle of December 24, 1914 describes a final training exercise for motorcycle dispatch riders before they were plunged into the horrors of the First World War. Headed ‘Final Touches to the Despatch Riders:
The Last Official Test Before Being Sent Abroad,’ it followed the manoeuvres of around 120 riders on Rudge, BSA, Triumph and Douglas motorcycles as they attempted to evade the ‘enemy’ (represented by six men wearing white sweaters over their raincoats and white bands around their caps) across the Surrey countryside.
Attached to make-believe headquarters at the Hut Hotel in Wisley, the riders were split into two divisions, one at Church Cobham and the other at Ottershaw, with two brigades to each division. Most of them slept in a barn at Esher, learning next morning that “a poor man had hanged himself there some 12 months previously”!
Making a 7.45am start, The Motor Cycle’s representatives followed the manoeuvres with the second division under the command of one Lieutenant Busby. After retreating to Leatherhead and holding its position there for a short while, the division finally withdrew to East Clandon, where Belgian officers recovering from their wounds in a private hospital took a great interest in the men and their machines. The main purpose of the exercise was to gain a thorough understanding of mapreading and the art of keeping away from main roads.
“The men were a particularly fine lot, and handled their machines with great skill,” wrote The Motor Cycle’s reporter, who added that 42 of the dispatch riders were captured by an ‘enemy’ whose duty was to intercept as many messages as possible.
When a dispatch rider was ‘captured’ in this way, his message was marked to record the fact, then he was sent off to find an alternative route over which he could deliver his dispatch before getting caught again.
The exercise was ended prematurely by a dispatch handed in at Guildford ordering everyone to return to barracks. Suddenly the whole thing was for real, and some of the young motorcycle enthusiasts would never see the woods and fields of Surrey again.
How great it is that Mortons Motorcycle Archive still had the bound copies from all those years ago, and better still, so many of the photographic images that went with them.
That same Christmas issue of The Motor Cycle from 107 years ago also contained a short illustrated report on a Zenith machine-gun outfit following an invitation from Mr F W Barnes of the Zenith Company, who had designed the sidecar chassis.
The sidecar was constructed throughout of straight tubes and was immensely strong. The gun pivoted on a centrally mounted supporting column, with a locking device to hold it in position until required. Releasing the locking screw allowed the gun to be lifted out and turned completely round so that it could be used in the opposite direction of fire.
“When the gun is in action,” wrote the reporter, “a ‘spade’ hinged to the nearside sidecar member can be let down to hold the combination steady while the gun is being fired. If the sidecar is lifted up and the leg pushed forward, it also makes an efficient sidecar stand.”
The quick detachability of the gun was especially important as, in the event of the combination arriving at a spot where further progress by road was not possible, the gun could be lifted up and a tripod quickly detached and carried along with the Vickers light machine gun to a convenient position. The gunner had a platform to sit on, and provision was also made for the conveyance of ammunition boxes. Such a matter-of-fact description bore no resemblance to the hell on earth the crews of such machines would encounter on the battlefield.
A letter to The Motor Cycle from one Sergeant AR Abbott, a wellknown motorcyclist who was an avid reader of the magazine and was attached to the 24th Field Ambulance Motor Transport Division, gave a graphic description of what life was like during those dark days.
He wrote: “Our hospital is situated about six miles from the firing line, which is about the limit of the range of shell fire, although now we do not take much notice of bullets or shells.
“We go to about one hundred or two hundred yards, and the stretcher bearers then walk the rest and carry back the wounded to us. As far as possible we stay behind an old farmhouse or cottage to shelter from the stray bullets, and there are plenty of them – souvenirs d’Allemande! On a dark night it is hell driving up there, and the roads (?) are awful, with ditches on each side. We also have to dodge innumerable shell holes in the road that would take two tip-cart loads of ballast to fill up.
“We have had one ambulance vehicle hit, but up to now no one has been shot. We also had one overturned in a ditch and got it out two days afterwards under shell fire. We had to rig up a tripod of scaffold poles, and, although I say it myself, this was a smart piece of work.”
The ambulance vehicles he referred to were probably fourwheeled, but many sidecar outfits were also built for stretcher work and their crews would all have witnessed similar horrors.
By the time Britain declared war on Germany for the second time, in September 1939, military motorcycles were at their zenith, and undertook countless roles including being dropped by parachute!
Two years ago our sister title
The Classic MotorCycle carried a well put together 24-page special supplement that charted the main types of British motorcycles used during the Second World War and outlined their pros and cons. Those covered included the 496cc BSA M20 side-valve single, 490cc Norton 16H side-valve single, 348cc Matchless G3 overhead-valve single, 350cc Triumph 3SW sidevalve single and 346cc Ariel WN/G overhead-valve single.
One of the nimblest and lightest of them all was BSA’s superb overhead-valve B30 single, yet those responsible for motorcycle procurement, wishing for more standardisation, ordered only a small number of them while boosting orders for the heavy and outdated side-valve M20s which were admittedly easier to fix at the roadside and had durability and reliability built in.
With airborne troops now playing a vital wartime role, a new niche opened up for tiny machines that could be dropped by parachute to enable the paratroopers to remove them from their containers and get out of the drop zones as quickly as possible in order to establish communications between themselves and front line forces already on the ground who could be some distance away or out of radio contact.
One of these was the Royal Enfield WD/RE Flying Flea, a stripped-down conventional lightweight motorcycle powered by a 126cc Villiers twostroke engine. Capable of stretching each gallon of fuel up to 130 miles, Flying Fleas were designed to be dropped by parachute in special cages, and could also be loaded into gliders four at a time.
Along much the same lines as Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bombs, the cages in which prototypes were dropped from the bomb racks of Halifax and Lancaster bombers were not strong enough, and the bikes sustained damage such as bent wheels when they hit the ground. Perseverance paid off, however, and cages built with heavier tubing and extra bracing were finally up to the job.
The first significant orders for these little machines were finally placed in 1943. The ‘Fleas’ could be secured inside gliders four at a time, and were also used in beach landings.
The unlikely story of the Excelsior Welbike seems readymade for a tongue-in-cheek James Bond scene! Produced at the direction of ‘Station IX’ for use by the Special Operations Executive, more than 3600 were made between 1942 and 1945, and, of course, they were the inspiration behind the postwar civilian Corgi scooters.
The tiny 98cc Villiers-powered machines, designed to be squeezed into the tight confines of standard CLE parachute airdrop containers measuring just 51 inches long, 15 inches high and 12 inches wide, became the smallest motorcycles ever used by the British military.
Some Welbikes were allocated to Britain’s 1st and 6th Airborne Divisions, and played a part in the disastrous Operation Market Garden airborne landings along the Eindhoven-Nijmegen-Arnhem corridor in the Netherlands between September 17-25, 1944.
Such was the squeeze into their containers that the Welbikes were built without suspension or lights and had just a single back brake.
The front-mounted fuel tank held just 6.5 imperial pints, which, with luck, might be stretched to around 90 miles. After the parachutists retrieved them from their containers, they had to twist the handlebars into position, lock them on springloaded pins, pull up the saddle stem, pull out the footrests and push-start the tiny machine into action – a task that, it was said, could be completed in an unlikely 11 seconds!