Original Military Bicycle Photographs

[DaytonandElgin]

U.S. Marines relax on a captured Japanese bike, after a battle at Tarawa (atoll), Kiribati, in the Gilbert Islands chain of the Pacific Ocean, 1943.

Tarawa is near the equator, about 2,390 miles northeast of Brisbane, Australia.

Photographer Norman Hatch (1921-2017) shot the picture, and many others of Marines during WWII. His work was featured in the Academy Award-winning short documentary, "With the Marines at Tarawa" (1944).

Hatch died 4-22-2017, at Alexandria, Virginia, age 96, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. A photo of him is posted below.

(Norman Hatch photo collection, Portal to Texas History, and FindaGrave.com.)

 

[DaytonandElgin]

U.S. Coast Guardsmen, aboard an assault transport in England, hoist bicycles in preparation for the Invasion of Normandy, France, in 1944.

Bikes, along with Jeeps, trucks, bulldozers, and tanks, helped secure the Normandy beachhead. D-Day, the invasion codename, started 6-6-1944.

(U.S. Coast Guard, and the National Archives.)

 

[DaytonandElgin]

Parade in Basel, Switzerland, about 1941.

(Harry Truman Library, Independence, Missouri, and the National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

 

[DaGasMan]

Parade in Basel, Switzerland, about 1941.

(Harry Truman Library, Independence, Missouri, and the National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

View attachment 2165932

This parade flag/pennant bracket is trick.

 

[DaytonandElgin]

Women's Auxiliary Corps (WAC), with the Miami Beach Service Base in Florida, about 1943.

(Beverly Taylor Collection, Nimitz Foundation.)

 

[Mercian]

Hi @DaytonandElgin

Excellent photo (-:

The ladies are all using men’s G519 bicycles.

The one at the front at least is a straight down tube Columbia.

Best regards,

Adrian

 

[DaytonandElgin]

"5 Points" was put on a scrapbook page, describing this WWI-era photo, circa 1918. The scrapbook pertains to the Air Service career of Edward Irvine Sproull (1897-1956), of Bedford, Indiana, 25 miles south of Bloomington.

2nd Lt. Sproull died Aug. 16, 1956, age 59. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. See second photo of him, and third photo of marker.

(Museum of Flight, Seattle, Wash.; Northwest Digital Heritage, Washington and Oregon; and FindaGrave.com.)

 

[DaytonandElgin]

Members of Connecticut National Guard Signal Corps, First Regiment, aim their rifles from behind upside-down bikes, Niantic, Conn., 1890.

An officer is in the middle, with a horse.

Niantic is 5 miles west of New London, Conn., and 36 miles southeast of Hartford.

(Connecticut Digital Archive.)

 

[Huffy45]

Camouflaged Finnish army bike in forest in Rukajärvi area, Karelia 1941. SA-Kuva Archive.

 

[DaytonandElgin]

Swedish soldiers near Stockholm, about 1939.

(Photo by Therese Bonney in care of Bancroft Library, UC-Berkeley. Copyright issued to University of California regents.)