There is a long history of militaries using bicycles in warfare—from the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps that conducted long-distance tests in the 1890s to the Swiss Army's Bicycle Regiment that continued infantry drills until 2001—but nothing was quite as daring as the folding bikes that were made specifically for British paratroopers in World War II. It's hard to even imagine gripping the 23-and-a-half-pound contraption with wooden pedals and preparing to leap out of a plane into a war zone in the night. But that's exactly what these lads did.

The BSA and Military Bicycle Museum

Over 60,000 Airborne Folding Paratrooper Bicycles were made by the Birmingham Small Arms company between 1942 and 1945. The bike was used by both British and Canadian troops in major conflicts throughout WWII, including on D-Day and at the Battle of Arnhem in 1944.

The folding bicycles were intended to give paratroopers a way to cover larger distances after landing while remaining quiet and undetected. They were often abandoned when they became more burdensome than useful, but images from the war show the bikes on the backs of tanks or loaded into Jeeps. They clearly remained a useful supplementary vehicle throughout the war.

The BSA and Military Bicycle Museum

The BSA and Military Bicycle Museum

The paratroopers held the folded bikes out in front of them, with the wheels attached to the parachute suspension line, as they jumped out of planes and floated to the ground. Two wingnuts, one at the top of the frame and one at the bottom, could be loosened to fold the bicycle in half, swinging the front wheel around to the right so it ends up next to the rear wheel.

Brackets attached to the frame allowed the paratroopers to strap their rifles to the bikes. The frames were primarily painted a khaki green color, though some of the bikes, which are now very rare, were painted brown at the end of the war due to a shortage of green paint.

The BSA and Military Bicycle Museum

The BSA and Military Bicycle Museum

The bikes became common in France and Norway after the war, two of the places they were most commonly used and ultimately abandoned. The remaining BSA Airborne Paratrooper Bicycles are either in museums or owned by collectors.

Amid the complicated mess that is modern warfare, it can be almost comforting to think of these brave men leaping out of airplanes with nothing but their folding bicycles and their guts.

Source: The BSA and Military Bicycle Museum

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io