EX military bikes

[Greybeard]

'Military motorcycles for sale in 1946. When World War II ended in 1945, the industrial war machine did not stop overnight. Estimates of the value of the probable surpluses have ranged from a low of $25 billion to a high of $150 billion. Photographs from the surplus vehicle boneyards: https://bit.ly/3LK2ejp'

[Rex]

One pic shows "bundles of five bikes to be sold as scrap" in the UK. Sold to be reconn'd for a transport-hungry population, more like.
Great pics though, and show why the Germans were always going to lose in the end.

[WozzA]

While investigating my old mans Military records a couple of years ago I discovered he was court marshaled when he went AWOL on a Military BSA M20 number 87576 to Visit a young lady he got in the family way..     

[Greybeard]

While investigating my old mans Military records a couple of years ago I discovered he was court marshaled when he went AWOL on a Military BSA M20 number 87576 to Visit a young lady he got in the family way..     

Wow! Do you know what his punishment was? Was that lady your Mum?

[WozzA]

While investigating my old mans Military records a couple of years ago I discovered he was court marshaled when he went AWOL on a Military BSA M20 number 87576 to Visit a young lady he got in the family way..     

Wow! Do you know what his punishment was? Was that lady your Mum?

He copped a fine of Pay & a month restricted to barracks ...
Was she my mum?...   NOPE, dont know who she is / was or if I have a 1/2 sister or brother..
I've done a DNA test but so far only cousins I didn't know have turned up..   TIME will TELL 

[Topdad]

Think I may have touched on this before but still relevant  ,I think, just to show how much was there.In 1967 I worked in the car and bike trade for Victor Horsman ltd . Our MD ,if youve seen any of there road safety films Hes the guy with the slicked back hair, decided to visit the Ministry of supplies main disposal centre in Nottingham. We were completely in the dark about what we'd find ,I was after mini's ,as i was running a "bargin basement ( cars up to a max of £300 ) 18 of us were ferried to this place ,the sight that greeted us was completely mind boggling ,just field after field of vehicles, we in truth only saw the tip of it. Within an hour I found enough minis to keep me going form a good while ,some with hand controls and just delivery mileage ,some were so rotten underneath that a belt on the rear subframe collapsed the car completely again with low or nil mileage ,it was totally shocking . In all we acquired water tankers ,lorries and vans ,which were loaded onto low loaders ,the mini's we drove back to Queensferry brh.If it started we drove it back if we couldn't we got another one so many to chose from, once my job was done a little exploring revealed rows of wd bikes mostly triumph twins is it TRW's tons of M20's and a few ajs or matchless ,of course joe public wasn't allowed in ! just for the record out of 18 minis driven back only 1 needed to be towed back to q/ferry ,the one I drove started to lose water from a knackered water pump but by filling it again and again made it back ,quite an experience for a 17 yr old ,strangely we never went back which surprised us all 

[muskrat]

G'day Fellas.
Years ago I was told by a next door neighbor (retired cop from Narrandera) that he had a side car and wanted a bike to couple it to. He and a mate went to the surplus auction in Sydney. He found a nice WLA Harley and bid on it. Won for under 100 quid. Went to pay and pick up the auctioneer said where do you want it delivered? He said I've got a trailer I'll take it now. The auctioneer laughed and said "you bid on lot #**, it has 10 bikes".
The bikes were delivered and all his mate could say was where are we going to get another 9 sidecars?
Cheers

[Brian]

slighthitchmitch   Australia didnt use the C number system like the UK, we had ARN which is the Australian Registration Number. There is no correlation between the C numbers and the ARN. When the bikes left the factory they were assigned a C number as they were delivered to the UK department of defence but when shipped overseas to Aus that number was not used. It all gets a bit confusing as the original C number is recorded in the paperwork but not used on the bike. I've added a couple of pics, the one of all the bikes you can see the ARN number on the bikes. The other pic is of the disposal record of my own M20, you can see the C number is recorded 4665513 but the bike was assigned the ARN 83127, frame number 61805. The Australian War Museum has records that are available for all vehicles used during WW11.

[BSA_54A10]

What we forget is everything made for WWII was obsolete even before the end of the war
Jets & turbo props surpassed piston powered air craft engines
SO everything post war is scrap metal because he who has the newest best weapons has the greater chance of winning
The UK was bankrupted and excluded from most of the recovery aid
This of course was deliberate so the USA would have no other "super power " around to chalenge their dominance .
The UK government exported a lot of surplus vehicles to Australia .
My WM 20, bought new from the surplus auctions at Moorebank was never delivered to Australia according to factory & defense records yet here it is along with a least 5 others in the same sequence .
We never used any Welbikes yet over 5,000 were disposed of from the Albury- Woodonga stores
Simsmetal actually made special crates out of scrap titanium in order to lower complete Merlins & Griffons into the furnaces to melt off the alloy and catch the bronze & steel bits to be sorted as it took too long to break up the engines for remelt .
While BSA carried on making the same military bikes post WWII ( C & M series ) painted different colours for domestic use, most manufacturers took the oppertunity to incorperate technical advances made during the war into new models
BSA did nothing more than to modify the weak B series bottom to ends into the stronger M series bottom ends and carry on in 1957 with their 1936 line up dropping the M19 350 SV single & from the B series the B20, 21 & 22 250cc sports in favour of 1932 economy designed  C10 & 11

[Black Sheep]

My Dad and his unit recaptured 4 M20s from the Japanese on the re-take of Burma. They kept them for the rest of the war. He tried to bring his back to the UK but was refused permission. The last he saw of it was on the dockside at Bombay as his troopship sailed out for home.

[Rex]

When I was an apprentice I used to work with an old boy who had been in Australia (Sydney seems to ring a bell) at the War's end, and recalls the US Navy dumping still-crated Harley's over the side just outside the harbour.

On a sadder note, at the end of WW1 there were over a million "spare" horses owned by the British Army in Belgium, France etc. Couldn't bring them home to flood the UK horse market so most were shot in a mass cull.
A few thousand were sent to Egypt to be sold, but given the way they treat donkeys and mules in the Middle East, the ones already culled were the lucky ones..

[chaterlea25]

Hi All,
Sometime around 1972/3, the bus I used to get home from school passed the "Victoria" dockard at Passage West Co Cork, upstairs on the bus I could see over the high wall of the dockyard which was being used to process scrap back then.
I remember seeing a "mountain " of M20's and other 4 wheeled ex army vehicles destined for the gas axes of the workers, 
A few years later a guy who worked there gave one of my friends a couple of magdyno's that he had removed "just in case"

John