Original Military Bicycle Photographs

[DaytonandElgin]

A British Spitfire receives attention from Army personnel in Malta, south of Sicily, in the central Mediterranean, 1943, during WWII.

Servicemen rode bicycles to check and refuel Allied planes, and maintain the Malta airfield.

(Records of U.S. Air Force-WWII, Dept. of Defense, and the National Archives.)

 

[DaytonandElgin]

Suzanne (Delano) Parish (1922-2010), & hubby Preston "Pete" Parish (1919-2020), have fun with a tandem in Hickory Corners, Mich., 1964.

Suzanne was a WASP in WWII, and a pilot who flew with returning male combat pilots in Texas, and flight-tested their planes.

Pete Parish served with the Marines in the Pacific during WWII, and also was a pilot after the war. He retired from Upjohn, a Michigan-based pharmaceutical company, after 35 years.

Suzanne performed loops, barrel rolls, and flyovers at air shows, and was a co-founder of the Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum. She died on May 12, 2010, age 87.

Pete died on July 1, 2020, age 100.

(Western Michigan University Libraries, and FindaGrave.com. Tandem photo courtesy of Gilmore Car Museum, Hickory Corners, Mich., 16 miles northwest of Battle Creek.)

 

[DaytonandElgin]

Women's Army Corps (WAC) members at a bomber station in England, Dec. 22, 1943, three days before Christmas. (AP, and The Atlantic.)

 

[DaytonandElgin]

PFC Horace Boykin (on bike), and other U.S. Marines, supplied ammunition to front-line troops at Saipan/Northern Mariana Islands, 129 miles northeast of Guam, Pacific Ocean, in 1944.

(AP, and the National Archives.)

 

[Jonesy]

Shrivenham is only three miles from my house.

 

[DaytonandElgin]

U.S. bomber crewmen ride bikes on a tarmac, to reach their warplanes in England, June 8, 1942.

(AP, and The Atlantic.)

 

[DaytonandElgin]

U.S. servicemen explore England, May 19, 1944.

(Maeers/Fox/Getty, and The Atlantic.)

 

[DaytonandElgin]

Marine PFC Warren B. Clark carries a captured Japanese bike through deep mud, at Cape Gloucester, New Britain Island, 1,561 miles north of Brisbane, Australia, Jan. 3, 1944, WWII.

Clark was from Ames, Iowa.

(National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas. Photo by Norm Hatch.)

 

[DaytonandElgin]

U.S. Marines surround a bicycle they captured from Japanese troops, on Roi-Namur Island, 2,723 miles north-northeast of Brisbane Australia, during their February 1944 campaign.

(National Museum of the Pacific War. Photo by Norman Hatch, 1921-2017.)