Wing Your Heel
Wore out three sets of tires already!
The BSA airborne bicycle was used in battle, but not as much as originally planned. The plan appears to have been that the bicycles would be mass produced and make the airborne soldiers mobile once they had landed. It was better and faster than walking. The British Airborne Forces used a few on operations, but as larger vehicles such as the jeep were available by June 1944, the bicycles were far less important.
BSA Airborne bicycles are sought-after, but they are definitely not rare. Over 70,000 were made.
Even original paint with original transfers intact is more common than you might expect. Unfortunately, with many over-enthusiastic military buffs more keen on a pristine finish (to match their jeeps) than preserving original paintwork, original paint bikes are becoming rarer all the time.
Unlike you good ol' boys in the US of A, we limeys can't walk around with bazookas tucked in our belts. The 1906 BSA Lincoln Jeffries (Second Batch) fitted to the BSA Airborne is an air rifle, so is exempt.
The 'Home Guard' was established to patrol coastal areas of Great Britain to watch out for pesky Germans climbing over the cliffs to try and snatch a bottle of decent beer. These volunteers used whatever bicycles and weapons that were available.
BSA started out as a small arms manufacturer. Both their arms and bicycles were made to a consistently superb standard, hence their government contracts. The Lincoln Jeffries revolutionized air rifles (which previously had been badly-made and inaccurate in firing). 'Mr. Lincoln Jeffries genius and enterprise in the field of Air Rifle technology can be equated with that of the Wright Brothers in aviation and Marconi in the field of telecommunications.' As a result, boys received a higher standard of weapons training, a factor in the eventual formation of cyclist battalions in WW1.
War Grade tyres were made at least until 1955. A BSA inflator pump was part of the BSA original kit, though obviously other makes of pump were also used.
This summary of the bike is from the BSA & Military Bicycle Museum website. If you want to see more, you can visit this page:
http://bsamuseum.wordpress.com/1942-1945-bsa-airborne-bicycle-para-bike/
IF YOU HAVE ONE OF THESE BSA AIRBORNE BIKES PLEASE ADD YOUR PICTURES TO THIS THREAD
(There are separate threads for different makes and models of military bicycle)
