Tags
bicycle, bike, d day, d day invasion, history, paratrooper, unique, vintage, war, warfare, wwii, wwii history
A lot of us have seen movies such as Saving Private Ryan or the series Band of Brothers. These films depict scenes of soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy on D Day and still don’t come close to all the horror that what actually occurred that day. Men were cut down as soon as their landing craft doors opened (if they even made it that far). Now imagine this same seen with the added obstacle of the weight a soldier had on them with their combat jacket, packs, extra ammo and weapons. Still yet, imagine all of these things I just described coupled with the fact that you also have a bicycle that you are to contend with. Now I know what you are thinking. A bicycle, what is he talking about. Well for some of the British and Canadian forces who were to take the beaches of Normandy that day, this was a reality.
As one of the pictures I posted shows, some soldiers were to carry bicycles off of their landing craft and use them once them as a tactical advantage once they were further inland. The idea was that groups of soldiers could move inland quicker and more efficiently to achieve their objective by using the bicycles to get to their designated positions quietly and quickly. The problem with this plan, as if facing a wall of machine gun fire carrying or riding a bicycle wasn’t enough, was that the landing craft transporting the soldiers dropped them off much farther out to see than planned. This meant that the soldiers had to fight the surf and in many cases when they stepped off of the landing craft they were not able to touch the bottom. Struggling to stay afloat, the bicycles were usually one of the first things to be discarded.
I have read a lot of accounts of soldiers on D Day and most of them do not include anything about the bikes. Those that do describe them either talk about how much of a pain they were and how they got rid of them as soon as possible, while other accounts do describe that once the soldiers made it inland to the coastal roads they did use their bikes. In one particular case I remember a the soldier’s frustration about having to lay prostrate in a ditch along the road while having to hold his bicycle above the level of the ditch. He and other soldiers had to cross the distance of an open field this way, all while german soldiers across the field were firing at them. What a scene!!! I have since sold my book that had this first hand account, but if anyone reading this recalls this story or has the account please let me know.
The bikes were officially known as the Airborne bicycle or the Paratroopers Folding bicycle. They were manufactured by BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) and were designed to only weigh 21 pounds (the frame alone was 5 pounds). The bike was able to fold because of the unique design of two wing nuts, one on the top of the frame and one on the bottom of the frame, which allowed the back to be folded back onto itself to create a smaller form factor. There were many accessories for the bike, but most came with mounts for a riffle once the bike was unfolded. Also, the foot pedals were round and could be slide inward when the bike was folded. The accounts that I have read of the bike on D Day are all from ground troops, but as the name and photos imply, the bike was designed for paratroopers to use on airborne assaults. I have read countless accounts of how when American paratroopers jumped on D Day the bags they had strapped around their legs tore loose once leaving the plane; I wonder if this was the same result when British soldiers jumped with these bicycles strapped to their front. Some innocent French citizen on the shores of Normandy that early morning of D Day may have thought bicycles were falling from the sky.
Standing on the shoulders of giants. 