Birmingham Small Arms Company
Encyclopedia
This article is not about Gamo subsidiary BSA Guns (UK) Limited of Armoury Road, Small Heath, Birmingham B11 2PP or 'BSA Company
' or its successors.
The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited, BSA was a major industrial combine, a group of businesses manufacturing military and sporting firearms; bicycles; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron castings; hand
, power
, and machine
tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered metals; and hard chrome process.
At its peak, BSA was the largest motorcycle producer in the world. Loss of sales and poor investments in new products in the motorcycle division, which included Triumph Motorcycles, led to problems for the whole group.
A government-organized rescue operation in 1973 led to the takeover of remaining operations by what is now Manganese Bronze Holdings
, then owners of Norton-Villiers
, and over the following decade further closures and dispersals. The original company, The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited, remains a subsidiary of Manganese Bronze but its name was changed in 1987.
Manganese Bronze continues to operate former BSA subsidiary Carbodies
, now known as LTI Limited, manufacturers of London Taxicabs and the largest wholly British owned car manufacturer.
History of the BSA industrial group=
BSA began in June 1861 in the Gun Quarter, Birmingham England founded, specifically to manufacture guns by machinery, by fourteen gunsmiths of the Birmingham
Small Arms Trade Association. The balance had moved against the Birmingham gunsmiths following the outbreak of the Crimean War
in 1854. The Board of Ordnance
's Royal Small Arms Factory
at Enfield had introduced machinery made in the USA. Their greatly increased output had been achieved with reduced reliance on skilled craftsmen. The War Office provided free access to technical drawings and their facilities at their Enfield factory.
The newly-formed company purchased 25 acres of land at Small Heath, Birmingham
, built a factory there and made a road on the site calling it Armoury Road.
The first War Office contract was not agreed until 1868. In 1879 the factory, without work, was shut for a year. The military arms trade was precarious.
s on their own account and not until 1905 was the company's first experimental motorcycle
constructed. Bicycle production ceased in 1887 as the company concentrated on producing the Lee-Metford
magazine loading rifle for the War Office which was re-equipping the British Army with it. The order was for 1,200 rifles per week. BSA recommenced manufacturing bicycles on their own behalf from 1908. BSA Cycles Ltd was set up in 1919 for the manufacture of both bicycles and motorcycles. BSA sold the bicycle business to Raleigh in 1957 after separating the bicycle and motorcycle business in 1953.
a forerunner of ICI
.
The ensuing financial crisis did not prevent BSA from signing an agreement to amalgamate with another bicycle component manufacturer, the Eadie Manufacturing Company of Redditch
, on 11 February 1907. That decision was ratified by the shareholders of both companies at separate Extraordinary General Meetings held in the Grand Hotel, Birmingham on 27 February 1907. Albert Eadie became a BSA director, a post he held until his death in 1931.
. The first prototype automobile was produced in 1907. The following year, marketed under BSA Cycles Ltd, the company sold 150 automobiles and again began producing complete bicycles on its own account. By 1909 it was clear the new motorcar department was unsuccessful, an investigation committee reported to the BSA Board on the many failures of its management and their poor organization of production.
of Coventry. Daimler and Rover were then the largest British car producers. Daimler was immensely profitable. After its capital reconstruction in 1904 Daimler's profits were 57% and 150% returns on invested capital in 1905 and 1906. The attraction for Daimler shareholders was the apparent stability of BSA.
So in 1910 BSA purchased Daimler with BSA shares but Docker who negotiated the arrangements either ignored or failed in his assessment of their consequences for the new combine. The combine was never adequately balanced or co-ordinated. One of the financial provisions obliged Daimler to pay BSA an annual dividend of £100,000 representing approximately 40% of the actual cash BSA had put into Daimler. This financial burden deprived Daimler of badly needed cash to fund development, forcing the Daimler company to borrow money from the Midland Bank
.
BSA had still not recovered financially from the earlier purchase of Royal Small Arms factory at Sparkbrook and BSA were not in a position to finance Daimler, nor had either company ample liquid resources. BSA went ahead with motorcycle production in 1910, their first model available for the 1911 season. In 1913 the BSA group were compelled through pressure from the Midland Bank to make a capital issue of 300,000 preference shares. In the short term this was to solve the liquidity issue but further diluted the groups capitalisation.
Dudley Docker retired as a BSA director in 1912 and installed Lincoln Chandler on the BSA board as his replacement. Dudley Docker liked to draw a comparison between the BSA~Daimler merger he engineered and that of his 1902 merger of Metropolitan Carriage Wagon & Finance Company
and Patent Shaft
. However there was not the integration of facilities in the BSA~Daimler case, nor was there a reorganisation of either BSA or Daimler and in view of the earlier criticism contained in the 1909 report of the investigation committee, BSA continued to produce cars of their own using Daimler engines. In 1913 Daimler employed 5,000 workers to manufacture 1,000 vehicles an indication that things were not well.
in the US.
s, Lewis gun
s, shells
, motorcycles and other vehicles for the war effort.
, 770cc side valve (6-7 hp) motorcycle for the 1920 season. The machine had interchangeable valves, total loss oil system with mechanical pump and an emergency hand one. Retail price was £130. Other features were Amac
carburettor, chain drive, choice of magneto
or Magdyno, 7-plate clutch, 3 speed gear box with kickstarter
and new type of cantilever fork
, Airco's main plant at Hendon had employed between 7,000 and 8,000 people. The Airco group of companies had turned out a new aircraft every 45 minutes.
Within days BSA discovered Airco was in a far more serious financial state than George Holt Thomas
had revealed. Holt Thomas was immediately dropped from his new seat on the BSA board and all BSA's new acquisitions were placed in the hands of a liquidator. Some of the businesses were allowed to continue for some years, Aircraft Transport and Travel
's assets being eventually rolled into Daimler Air Hire to make Daimler Airway Limited
. BSA failed to pay a dividend for the following four years while it tried to recover from its losses. Some relief was achieved when in March 1924 Daimler Airway and its management became the major constituent of Imperial Airways
.
As well as the Daimler car range, BSA Cycles Ltd re-entered the car market under the BSA name in 1921 with a V-twin engined light car followed by four-cylinder models up to 1926, when the name was temporarily dropped. In 1929 a new range of 3 and 4 wheel cars appeared and production of these continued until 1936.
By 1930 the BSA Group's primary activities were BSA motorcycles and Daimler vehicles.
Car production under the BSA name ceased in the 1930s.
at Sparkbrook was acquired and production of their cars transferred to Daimler's Coventry works.
would not begin production until 1941. BSA Guns Ltd was also producing .303 Browning machine gun
s for the Air Ministry
at the rate of 600 guns per week in March 1939 and Browning production was to peak at 16,390 per month by March 1942. The armed forces had chosen the 500 cc side-valve BSA M20
motorcycle as their preferred machine. On the outbreak of war the Government requisitioned the 690 machines BSA had in stock as well as placing an order for another 8,000 machines. South Africa, Eire, India, Sweden and Holland also wanted machines.
The Government passed the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939
on 24 August allowing the drafting of defence regulations affecting food, travel, requisitioning of land and supplies, manpower and agricultural production. A second Emergency Powers (Defence) Act was passed on 22 May 1940 allowing the conscription of labour. The fall of France had not been anticipated in Government planning and the encirclement of a large part of the British Expeditionary Force
into the Dunkirk pocket resulted in a hasty evacuation of that part of the B.E.F following the abandonment of their equipment. The parlous state of affairs "no arms, no transport, no equipment" in the face of the threat of imminent invasion of Britain by Nazi
forces was recorded by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke
in his diary entries of the 1/2 July 1940.
The creation of the Home Guard (initially as the Local Defence Volunteers) following Anthony Eden
's broadcast appeal to the Nation on Tuesday 14 May 1940 also created further demand for arms production to equip this new force. BSA, as the only rifle producer in Britain, had to step up to the mark and the workforce voluntarily went onto a 7 day week. Motorcycle production was also stepped up from 500 to 1,000 machines per week which meant a finished machine coming off the production line every 5 minutes. The motorcycle department had been left intact in 1939 due to demand which was doubled following Dunkirk. At the same time BSA staff were providing lectures and demonstrations on motorcycle riding and maintenance to 250,000 officers and men in all parts of the UK.
The BSA factory at Small Heath was bombed
by the Luftwaffe
on 26 August 1940 resulting in one H.E.bomb and a shower of incendiaries hitting the main barrel mill which was the only one operating on service rifles in the country, causing the unaffordable loss of 750 machine tool
s but fortunately no loss of life. Two further air raids
took place on 19 and 22 November 1940. The air raid of 19 November did the most damage, causing loss of production and trapping hundreds of workers. Two BSA night-shift electricians, Alf Stevens and Alf Goodwin, helped rescue their fellow workers. Alf Stevens was awarded the George Medal
for his selfless acts of bravery in the rescue and Alf Goodwin was awarded the British Empire Medal
. Workers involved in the works Civil Defence
were brought in to help search for and clear bodies to get the plant back into production. The net effect of the November raids was to destroy machine shops in the four-storey 1915 building, the original 1863 gunsmiths' building and nearby buildings, 1,600 machine tools, kill 53 employees, injure 89, 30 of them seriously and halt rifle production for three months.
The Government Ministry of Supply
and BSA immediately began a process of production dispersal throughout Britain. Factories were set up at Tipton
, Dudley
, Smethwick
, Blackheath
, Lye
, Kidderminster
, Stourport
, Tyseley
, and Bromsgrove
to manufacture Browning machine guns, Stoke
, Corsham
, and Newcastle-under-Lyme
produced the Hispano cannon
, Leicester
and Studley Road
produced the Besa machine gun
, Ruislip
produced the Oerlikon 20mm cannon, Stafford
produced rocket projectiles
, Tamworth
produced two-pounder gun carriages
, Mansfield
produced the Boys Anti-tank gun and Shirley
produced rifles. These were dispersal factories which were in addition to Small Heath and the other BSA factories opened in the two years following the 1940 blitz. At its peak Small Heath was running 67 factories engaged in war production. BSA operations were also dispersed to other companies under licence.
In 1941 BSA was approached to produce a new pedal cycle with a maximum weight allowance of only 22 lb especially for airborne
use. This required a new concept in frame design which BSA found, producing a machine which weighed 21 lb, one pound less than the design specification and which also exceeded the design requirement for an effective life of 50 miles many times over. Over 60,000 folding bicycle
s were produced, a figure equal to half the total production of military bicycles during World War II. BSA also produced folding motorcycles
for the Airborne Division. In late 1942 BSA examined the Special Operations Executive
designed Welgun with a view to manufacture. BSA were willing to manufacture the gun in the quantities required starting April 1943 but the cheaper and less accurate Sten Mk IV was adopted for production by the Ministry of Supply. BSA bought the Sunbeam
motorcycles and bicycle business from Associated Motor Cycles Ltd
in 1943 and then Ariel Motors Ltd
in 1944. During the course of the conflict BSA produced 1,250,000 Lee Enfield .303 service rifles, 404,383 Sten
sub-machine guns, 468,098 Browning machine guns plus spares equivalent to another 100,000, 42,532 Hispano cannon, 32,971 Oerlikon cannon, 59,322 7.9 mm Besa machine guns, 3,218 15 mm Besa machine guns, 68,882 Boys Anti-tank guns, 126,334 motorcycles, 128,000 military bicycles (over 60,000 of which were folding paratrooper bicycles), 10,000,000 shell fuse cases, 3,485,335 magazines and 750,000 anti-aircraft rockets were supplied to the armed forces.
At the same time other parts of the Group were having similar problems. Before World War II Daimler had been linked with other Coventry motor manufacturers in a government-backed scheme for aero engine manufacture and had been allocated two shadow factories. Apart from this, BSA-owned Daimler was producing Scout Cars
and Daimler Mk I Armoured Cars which had been designed by BSA at Small Heath not Coventry as well as gun turrets, gun parts, tank transmissions, rocket projectiles and other munitions. This activity had not gone unnoticed by the enemy, which made Radford Works a target in the Coventry air raids
. Radford Works received direct hits in four separate air raids during 1940. None of these attacks were to seriously disrupt production, however two more serious air raids were carried out in April 1941 which destroyed half the factory. In all it is estimated that 170 bombs containing 52,000 lbs of explosive were dropped on Radford Works as well as the thousands of incendiaries. Like BSA, Daimler had to find dispersal units. A back-handed compliment was paid by Field Marshal Rommel
to the workers at Radford Works when he used a captured Daimler Scout to escape following his defeat at El Alamein
.
factory was turned over entirely to motorcycle production.
BSA produced the first Sunbeam bicycle catalogue in 1949 and produced its own '4 Star' derailleur gear with an associated splined cassette hub
and 4 sprocket cassette. This design was different from the 1930s Bayliss Wiley cassette hub which had a threaded sprocket carrier. BSA bought New Hudson motorcycle and bicycle business in 1950 and followed this up in 1951 with the purchase of Triumph Motorcycles which brought Jack Sangster
onto the BSA board. The affect of this acquisition was to make BSA into the largest producer of motorcycles in the world at that time.
1952 saw BSA establish a Professional Cycling Team. Bob Maitland
a successful amateur cyclist and the highest placed British finisher in the 1948 Olympic Games road race and now an independent rider in the BSA team was a BSA employee working in the design office as a draughtsman. It was Bob Maitland who was responsible for the design of post war BSA range of lightweight sports bicycles based on his knowledge of cycling. Bob Maitland also made some of the components used on the bicycles of the professional team which were not standard production machines. In the 1952 Tour of Britain
Road Race run between Friday 22 August and Saturday 6 September, involving 14 individual stages and covering a total race distance of 1,470 miles, the BSA team of Bob Maitland, “Tiny” Thomas, Pete Proctor, Alf Newman and Stan Jones won the overall team race and Pete Proctor “King of the Mountains” classification. The riders also enjoyed success on the individual stages of the race. The team competed in four further events, 14 September Tour of the Chilterns, 1st “Tiny” Thomas and Team Prize, 21 September Weston-Super-Mare Grand Prix, Team Prize, 28 September Staffordshire Grand Prix, 1st Bob Maitland and Team Prize, 5 October Tour Revenge Race, Dublin, 1st “Tiny” Thomas and Team prize.
In 1953 BSA withdrew motorcycle production from BSA Cycles Ltd, the company it has established in 1919, by creating BSA Motorcycles Ltd. BSA also produced its 100,000th BSA Bantam
motorcycle, a fact celebrated at the 1953 motorcycle show with a visit by Sir Anthony Eden
to the BSA stand. In 1953 the BSA Professional Cycling Team was managed by Syd Cozens. Successes were 5/6 April Bournmouth 2 Day Road Race, 1st Bob Maitland, 12 April Dover to London 63 Miles Road Race, 1st Stan Jones, 31 May Langsett 90 Miles Road Race, 1st Bob Maitland and “King of the Mountains”, 7 June Tour of the Wrekin, 1st Bob Maitland, 12 July Severn Valley 100 Miles Road Race, 1st “Tiny” Thomas, 19 July Jackson Trophy, Newcastle, Team Prize, 9 August Les Adams Memorial 80 Miles Road Race, 1st Alf Newman, Team Prize, “King of the Mountains” Arthur Ilsley, 30 August Weston-Super-Mare 100 Miles Grand Prix, 1st Bob Maitland, Team Prize. The team also competed in the 1,624 mile, 12 stage, 1953 Tour of Britain Road Race. The 1953 line up had changed as Arthur Ilsley replaced Pete Proctor in the team. “Tiny” Thomas won the overall individual classification, the Team were runners-up in the team competition and Arthur Ilsley was 3rd in the “King of the Mountains” competition. Bob Maitland also had notable success by winning the Independent National Championship.
1954 saw the introduction of the BSA Quick Release 3 Speed hub gear. It was a split axle three speed gear intended for use with bicycles equipped with oil bath chainguards. The original BSA 3 speed hub gear had been made under licence from the Three-Speed Gear Syndicate since 1907. The design was later to be classified as the Sturmey-Archer
'Type X', but all BSA hub gear production ceased in 1955
Sir Bernard Docker
remained chairman of BSA until 1956 when the BSA removed him. In an acrimonious dispute conducted in the media the matter was brought to the BSA shareholders at the Annual General Meeting where the decision of the Board was upheld. Another significant departure for the fortune of the BSA Group but less controversial was the retirement on ill health grounds of James Leek CBE, Managing Director from 1939 until his retirement. Sir Bernard Docker was replaced as Chairman of the BSA Board by Jack Sangster.
The BSA bicycle division, BSA Cycles Ltd., including the BSA cycle dealer network was sold to Raleigh in 1957. Raleigh initially continued bicycle production in Birmingham at Coventry Road, Sheldon, Birmingham 26 into the early 1960s using up BSA parts but as time went on more stock Raleigh parts and fittings were used, some continuing to bear the 'piled arms' stamp. TI Group owners of the British Cycle Corporation bought Raleigh in 1960 thus gaining access to the BSA brand. Bicycles bearing the BSA name are currently manufactured and distributed within India by TI Cycles of India
but have no direct connection to the original Birmingham BSA company.
In 1960, Daimler
was sold off to Jaguar
.
1961 was the centenary year of the BSA Group and in recognition of this milestone the company magazine produced an anniversary issue of BSA Group News in June BSA Centenary 1861–1961 in which many of the achievements of the Group were celebrated. This year also saw the end of military rifle production, however BSA still continued to make sporting guns. In 1986 BSA Guns was liquidated, the assets bought and renamed BSA Guns (UK) Ltd. The company continues to make air rifles and shotguns, and is still based in Small Heath in Birmingham.
, Yamaha
and Suzuki
) and Europe from Jawa
/ CZ
, Bultaco
and Husqvarna
was eroding BSA's market share. The BSA (and Triumph range) were no longer aligned with the markets; moped
s were displacing scooter
sales; superbike engine capacity had risen to 1000 cc, and the trials and scrambles areas were now the preserve of European two-strokes. Some poor marketing decisions and expensive projects contributed to substantial losses. For example, the development and production investment of the Ariel 3, an ultra stable 3 wheel moped, was not recouped by sales; the loss has been estimated at £2 million.
In 1968, BSA announced many changes to its product line of singles, twins and the new three-cylinder machine named the "Rocket three" for the 1969 model year. It now concentrated on the more promising USA, and to a lesser extent, Canadian, markets. However, despite the adding of modern accessories, for example, turn signals and even differing versions of the A65 twins for home and export sale, the damage had been done and the end was near.
Reorganisation in 1971 concentrated motorcycle production at Meriden, Triumph's site, with production of components and engines at BSA's Small Heath. At the same time there were redundancies
and the selling of assets. Barclays Bank arranged financial backing to the tune of £10 million.
Upgrades and service bulletins continued until 1972, but the less service-intensive Japanese bikes had by then flooded the market on both sides of the Atlantic. The merger with Norton Villers was started in late 1972, and for a brief time a Norton 500 single was built with the B50
-based unit-single engine, but few if any were sold publicly. The BSA unit single B50's 500 cc enjoyed much improvement in the hands of the CCM motorcycle company allowing the basic BSA design to continue until the mid to late 1970s in a competitive form all over Europe.
By 1972, BSA was so moribund that, with bankruptcy
imminent, its motorcycle businesses were merged (as part of a government-initiated rescue plan) with the Manganese Bronze
company, Norton-Villiers
, to become Norton-Villiers-Triumph with the intention of producing and marketing Norton and Triumph motorcycles at home and abroad. In exchange for its motorcycle businesses, Manganese Bronze received BSA Group's non-motorcycle-related divisions—namely, Carbodies
. Although the BSA name was left out of the new company's name, a few products continued to be made carrying it until 1973. The final range was just four models: Gold Star 500, 650 Thunderbolt/Lightning and the 750 cc Rocket Three.
However, the plan involved the axing of some brands, large redundancies and consolidation of production at two sites. This scheme to rescue and combine Norton, BSA and Triumph failed in the face of worker resistance. Norton's and BSA's factories were eventually shut down, while Triumph staggered on to fail four years later.
.
BSA manufactured a range of bicycles from utility roadsters through to racing bicycles. The BSA range of Sports bicycles expanded in the 1930s following the granting of a patent for a new lighter design of seat lug in 1929 and tandems were introduced into the BSA bicycle range as well. BSA had a reputation for quality and durability and their components were more expensive that either Chater-Lea or Brampton. BSA launched a high end club cyclists machine in the early 1930s initially branded as the "Super-eeze". Never slow to avail of publicity BSA sponsored the great Australian cyclist Hubert Opperman
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/3415216471/in/set-72157603949012058/ and re-branded the top of the range machine the "Opperman" model http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/2777313275/in/set-72157606633777810/http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/2777318159/in/set-72157606633777810/. A less expensive range of clubman lightweight machines was introduced from 1936 with the "Cyclo" 3 speed derailleur equipped "Clubman". Subtle changes were made to the range, most models being equipped with "Russ" patent forks http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/4027019497/in/set-72157606633777810/ and some models were made for only two seasons. This all stopped around September 1939 with the outbreak of war. A revised catalogue with a much reduced range was issued in March 1940 which also saw the launch of the BSA "Streamlight" model http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/3041830262/in/set-72157606633777810/. A novel all white bicycle http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/3040988703/in/set-72157606633777810/ was produced for the blackout but had disappeared from a severely reduced bicycle range the details of which were circulated to dealers from December 1941. BSA had ceased production of their 3 speed hub gear in 1939 and production appears to have started again by 1945 although with a black finish instead of chromium plating. BSA bought Sunbeam in 1943 and produced Sunbeam bicycles using up existing frames and parts and using BSA components for the missing bits. The first BSA produced Sunbeam catalogue was published in 1949
Post war BSA expanded their bicycle range but faced problems of shortages of raw materials such as steel and was required to export a lot of their manufactured output in order to get a Government licence to purchase the necessary raw materials. The company moved bicycle production to the new Waverley Works after World War II. BSA continued to innovate introducing the 4 Star derailleur gear in 1949 along with an associated 4 speed 'unit' or cassette hub. The derailleur design was altered from 1950 and was certainly available up to 1953 but was not a great success. BSA bought New Hudson in 1950 and started to manufacture and sell New Hudson branded machines as well as Sunbeam. It appears that the top of the range BSA lightweight club cyclist machine was the "Gold Column" and this appears to have been changed into the BSA "Tour of Britain" model following the success of the BSA Professional Cycling Team in the 1952 Tour of Britain race. The "Tour of Britain" model was heavily promoted in the BSA 1953 sales literature. The factory made "Tour of Britain" model was not the same as those ridden by the professional team. Only eight machines were crafted for the professional team and none of the components appear to have been standard BSA parts. 1953 saw BSA separate the bicycle / motorcar and motorcycle business into different holdings.
The good times were coming to an end and demand for bicycles fell with the end of rationing in 1954 http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_3818000/3818563.stm. James Leek, managing director of BSA Cycles Ltd was suffering ill health and he retired in 1956, the same year the BSA Chairman, Sir Bernard Docker, was removed from the BSA Board. Jack Sangster
who had joined the BSA Board in 1951 following the purchase of his company Triumph Motorcycles became Chairman. The bicycle manufacturing business BSA Cycles Ltd was sold to Raleigh Industries in 1957.
, BSA Chairman, had informed the shareholders at the Company's 1910 AGM in Birmingham "We have decided to put a motor-bicycle on the market for the coming season....These machines will be on exhibit at the Cycle and Motor Show on November 21st, after which date we look forward to commencing delivery". The machines were available for the 1911 season and entire production sold out. BSA had previously acquired a commercially available engine in 1905 and fitted it to one of their bicycle frames and discovered at first hand the problems which needed to be overcome. BSA Cycles Ltd was set up as a subsidiary company in 1919 under Managing Director Charles Hyde to manufacture both bicycles and motorcycles.
BSA produced their only two stroke motorcycle design for the 1928 season, the 1.74 H.P. Model A28 with two speed gearbox. It was produced as the A29 and A30 the following two years and became the A31 with a three speed gearbox in 1931, the last year of production. The post war 'Bantam' was a German DKW design which was part of war reparation and it was not a true BSA design.
BSA motorcycles were sold as affordable motorcycles with reasonable performance for the average user. BSA stressed the reliability of their machines, the availability of spares and dealer support. The motorcycles were a mixture of sidevalve and OHV engines offering different performance for different roles, e.g. hauling a sidecar
. The bulk of use would be for commuting. BSA motorcycles were also popular with "fleet buyers" in Britain, who (for example) used the Bantams for telegram delivery for the Post Office
or motorcycle/sidecar combinations for AA patrols The Automobile Association
(AA) breakdown help services. This mass market appeal meant they could claim "one in four is a BSA" on advertising.
Machines with better specifications were available for those who wanted more performance or for competition work.
Initially, after World War II, BSA motorcycles were not generally seen as racing machines, compared to the likes of Norton
. In the immediate post war period few were entered in races such as the TT races, though this changed dramatically in the Junior Clubman event (smaller engine motorcycles racing over some 3 or 4 laps around one of the Isle of Man courses). In 1947 there were but a couple of BSA mounted riders, but by 1952 BSA were in the majority and in 1956 the makeup was 53 BSA, 1 Norton and 1 Velocette
.
To improve US sales, in 1954, for example, BSA entered a team of riders in the 200 mile Daytona beach race
with a mixture of single cylinder Gold Stars
and twin cylinder Shooting Stars assembled by Roland Pike. The BSA team riders took first, second, third, fourth, and fifth places with two more riders finishing at 8th and 16th. This was the first case of a one brand sweep.
The BSA factory experienced success in the sport of motocross
with Jeff Smith
riding a B40 to capture the 1964 and 1965 FIM
500 cc Motocross World Championships. It would be the last year the title would be won by a four-stroke machine until the mid-1990s.
A BSA motocross machine was often colloquially known as a "Beezer."
Birmingham rocker Steve Gibbons released a song "BSA" on his 1980 album "Saints & Sinners" as a tribute to the Gold Star. He still plays this song with his band and often performs on the Isle of Man at the TT races.
The C11 used a C10 motor fitted with an overhead valve
cylinder head. The C11 frame was almost unchanged until 1951 when BSA added plunger rear suspension. Early gearboxes
were weak and unreliable. The C11G was available with a three ratio gearbox and rigid frame or a four ratio gearbox and a plunger frame. Both models had better front brakes than earlier models. This model was a common commuter motorcycle, and many survive today.
Used the C11G engine, fitted with an alternator and swinging fork (known as swinging arm) rear suspension.
Car timeline
BSA Company
BSA Company Limited was a motorcycle manufacturer which purchased the rights to its BSA name from Birmingham Small Arms Company's successor, Dennis Poore's Manganese Bronze on the liquidation of Norton Villiers Triumph.-Origin:...
' or its successors.
The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited, BSA was a major industrial combine, a group of businesses manufacturing military and sporting firearms; bicycles; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron castings; hand
Hand tool
A hand tool is a device for performing work on a material or a physical system using only hands. The hand tools can be manually used employing force, or electrically powered, using electrical current...
, power
Power tool
A power tool is a tool that is actuated by an additional power source and mechanism other than the solely manual labour used with hand tools. The most common types of power tools use electric motors. Internal combustion engines and compressed air are also commonly used...
, and machine
Machine tool
A machine tool is a machine, typically powered other than by human muscle , used to make manufactured parts in various ways that include cutting or certain other kinds of deformation...
tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered metals; and hard chrome process.
At its peak, BSA was the largest motorcycle producer in the world. Loss of sales and poor investments in new products in the motorcycle division, which included Triumph Motorcycles, led to problems for the whole group.
A government-organized rescue operation in 1973 led to the takeover of remaining operations by what is now Manganese Bronze Holdings
Manganese Bronze Holdings
Manganese Bronze Holdings PLC is an engineering company based in Coventry, England. Since the sale of its components division in 2003 the company has only one operating division—LTI Limited, trading as The London Taxi Company—which manufactures and retails London Black Taxis.The London...
, then owners of Norton-Villiers
Norton-Villiers
Norton-Villiers was a British motorcycle manufacturer formed in the 1960s following the collapse of Associated Motorcycles. With the general decline of the British motorcycle industry it was combined with the remnants of BSA to form Norton-Villiers-Triumph....
, and over the following decade further closures and dispersals. The original company, The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited, remains a subsidiary of Manganese Bronze but its name was changed in 1987.
Manganese Bronze continues to operate former BSA subsidiary Carbodies
Carbodies
Carbodies LImited is a British company based at Holyhead Road, Coventry. It started business as a coachbuilder, and now, as The London Taxi Company is best known for its production of London taxicabs.-History:...
, now known as LTI Limited, manufacturers of London Taxicabs and the largest wholly British owned car manufacturer.
History of the BSA industrial group=
BSA began in June 1861 in the Gun Quarter, Birmingham England founded, specifically to manufacture guns by machinery, by fourteen gunsmiths of the Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
Small Arms Trade Association. The balance had moved against the Birmingham gunsmiths following the outbreak of the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
in 1854. The Board of Ordnance
Board of Ordnance
The Board of Ordnance was a British government body responsible for the supply of armaments and munitions to the Royal Navy and British Army. It was also responsible for providing artillery trains for armies and maintaining coastal fortresses and, later, management of the artillery and engineer...
's Royal Small Arms Factory
Royal Small Arms Factory
The Royal Small Arms Factory was a UK government-owned rifle factory in the London Borough of Enfield in an area generally known as the Lea Valley. The factory produced British military rifles, muskets and swords from 1816...
at Enfield had introduced machinery made in the USA. Their greatly increased output had been achieved with reduced reliance on skilled craftsmen. The War Office provided free access to technical drawings and their facilities at their Enfield factory.
The newly-formed company purchased 25 acres of land at Small Heath, Birmingham
Small Heath, Birmingham
Small Heath is an inner-city area within the city of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. It is situated on and around the A45 ....
, built a factory there and made a road on the site calling it Armoury Road.
Firearms
BSA's resort to the use of machinery was rewarded in 1863 with an order for 20,000 Turkish infantry rifles. The management of the BSA Company was changed at an Extraordinary Meeting called on September 30, 1863 when the Company was changed from being run by a committee to that of an elected Board of Directors, Joseph Wilson, Samuel Buckley, Isaac Hollis, Charles Playfair, Charles Pryse, Sir John Ratcliffe, Edward Gem, and J.F. Swinburn under the chairmanship of John Dent Goodman.The first War Office contract was not agreed until 1868. In 1879 the factory, without work, was shut for a year. The military arms trade was precarious.
Bicycles
The next year BSA branched out into bicycle manufacture. In 1880 they manufactured the Otto Dicycle, In the 1880s the company began to manufacture Safety bicycleSafety bicycle
A safety bicycle is a type of bicycle that became very popular beginning in the late 1880s as an alternative to the penny-farthing or ordinary and is now the most common type of bicycle. Early bicycles of this style were known as safety bicycles because they were noted for, and marketed as, being...
s on their own account and not until 1905 was the company's first experimental motorcycle
Motorcycle
A motorcycle is a single-track, two-wheeled motor vehicle. Motorcycles vary considerably depending on the task for which they are designed, such as long distance travel, navigating congested urban traffic, cruising, sport and racing, or off-road conditions.Motorcycles are one of the most...
constructed. Bicycle production ceased in 1887 as the company concentrated on producing the Lee-Metford
Lee-Metford
The Lee-Metford rifle was a bolt action British army service rifle, combining James Paris Lee's rear-locking bolt system and ten-round magazine with a seven groove rifled barrel designed by William Ellis Metford...
magazine loading rifle for the War Office which was re-equipping the British Army with it. The order was for 1,200 rifles per week. BSA recommenced manufacturing bicycles on their own behalf from 1908. BSA Cycles Ltd was set up in 1919 for the manufacture of both bicycles and motorcycles. BSA sold the bicycle business to Raleigh in 1957 after separating the bicycle and motorcycle business in 1953.
Bicycle components
In 1893 BSA commenced making bicycle hubsand continued to supply the cycle trade with bicycle parts up to 1936. BSA bought The Eadie Manufacturing Company of Redditch in 1907 and so began to manufacture the Eadie two speed hub gear and the Eadie coaster brake hub. BSA also signed an agreement with the Three Speed Gear Syndicate in 1907 to manufacture a 3 speed hub under licence. This was later classified as the Sturmey Archer Type X. BSA introduced a 'Duo' hub in the late 1930s which was capable of one fixed gear and one gear with a freewheel. All BSA hub gear production temporarily ceased in 1939, until they recommenced making their 3 speed hub around 1945. The Eadie coaster hub made a brief return in 1953 on two BSA bicycle models. BSA forever ceased production of their hub gears in 1955.Ammunition
BSA sold its ammunition business in 1897 to Birmingham Metal and Munitions Company Limited part of the Nobel-Dynamite Trust, through KynochKynoch
Kynoch was a manufacturer of ammunition, later incorporated into ICI but remaining as a brand name for sporting cartridges.-History:Kynoch was established in Witton in Birmingham in 1862 by Scottish entrepreneur George Kynoch when he opened a percussion cap factory in Witton. In 1895 he built an...
a forerunner of ICI
Imperial Chemical Industries
Imperial Chemical Industries was a British chemical company, taken over by AkzoNobel, a Dutch conglomerate, one of the largest chemical producers in the world. In its heyday, ICI was the largest manufacturing company in the British Empire, and commonly regarded as a "bellwether of the British...
.
Sparkbrook
In 1906 Frank Dudley Docker was appointed a director of the Company. By the autumn of that year BSA were in some difficulty. They had purchased the Sparkbrook Royal Small Arms Factory from the War Office, and in return, the War Office undertook to give BSA a quarter of all orders for Lee-Enfield rifles, but the War Office did not honour their undertaking.The ensuing financial crisis did not prevent BSA from signing an agreement to amalgamate with another bicycle component manufacturer, the Eadie Manufacturing Company of Redditch
Redditch
Redditch is a town and local government district in north-east Worcestershire, England, approximately south of Birmingham. The district had a population of 79,216 in 2005. In the 19th century it became the international centre for the needle and fishing tackle industry...
, on 11 February 1907. That decision was ratified by the shareholders of both companies at separate Extraordinary General Meetings held in the Grand Hotel, Birmingham on 27 February 1907. Albert Eadie became a BSA director, a post he held until his death in 1931.
Motorcycles
Motor bicycles were added to bicycle products in 1910. The BSA 3½ hp was exhibited at the 1910 Olympia Show, London for the 1911 season. The entire BSA production sold out in 1911, 1912 and 1913.BSA cars
In an effort to make use of the Sparkbrook factory BSA established a motor-car department there. An independent part of it was occupied by Lanchester Motor CompanyLanchester Motor Company
The Lanchester Motor Company Limited was a car manufacturer based until 1930 at Armourer Mills, Montgomery Street, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, England. It operated from 1895 to 1955....
. The first prototype automobile was produced in 1907. The following year, marketed under BSA Cycles Ltd, the company sold 150 automobiles and again began producing complete bicycles on its own account. By 1909 it was clear the new motorcar department was unsuccessful, an investigation committee reported to the BSA Board on the many failures of its management and their poor organization of production.
Daimler vehicles
Dudley Docker had joined the board in 1906 and was appointed deputy chairman of BSA in 1909. He had made a spectacular financial success of a merger of five large rolling-stock companies in 1902 and become the leader of the period's merger movement. Believing he could buy the missing management skills that could not be found within BSA he started merger talks with The Daimler Motor Company LimitedDaimler Motor Company
The Daimler Motor Company Limited was an independent British motor vehicle manufacturer founded in London by H J Lawson in 1896, which set up its manufacturing base in Coventry. The right to the use of the name Daimler had been purchased simultaneously from Gottlieb Daimler and Daimler Motoren...
of Coventry. Daimler and Rover were then the largest British car producers. Daimler was immensely profitable. After its capital reconstruction in 1904 Daimler's profits were 57% and 150% returns on invested capital in 1905 and 1906. The attraction for Daimler shareholders was the apparent stability of BSA.
So in 1910 BSA purchased Daimler with BSA shares but Docker who negotiated the arrangements either ignored or failed in his assessment of their consequences for the new combine. The combine was never adequately balanced or co-ordinated. One of the financial provisions obliged Daimler to pay BSA an annual dividend of £100,000 representing approximately 40% of the actual cash BSA had put into Daimler. This financial burden deprived Daimler of badly needed cash to fund development, forcing the Daimler company to borrow money from the Midland Bank
Midland Bank
Midland Bank Plc was one of the Big Four banking groups in the United Kingdom for most of the 20th century. It is now part of HSBC. The bank was founded as the Birmingham and Midland Bank in Union Street, Birmingham, England in August 1836...
.
BSA had still not recovered financially from the earlier purchase of Royal Small Arms factory at Sparkbrook and BSA were not in a position to finance Daimler, nor had either company ample liquid resources. BSA went ahead with motorcycle production in 1910, their first model available for the 1911 season. In 1913 the BSA group were compelled through pressure from the Midland Bank to make a capital issue of 300,000 preference shares. In the short term this was to solve the liquidity issue but further diluted the groups capitalisation.
Dudley Docker retired as a BSA director in 1912 and installed Lincoln Chandler on the BSA board as his replacement. Dudley Docker liked to draw a comparison between the BSA~Daimler merger he engineered and that of his 1902 merger of Metropolitan Carriage Wagon & Finance Company
Metro Cammell
The Metropolitan Cammell Carriage and Wagon Company was a Birmingham, England based manufacturer of railway carriages and wagons, based in Saltley and subsequently Washwood Heath....
and Patent Shaft
Patent Shaft
Patent Shaft, formerly The Patent Shaft and Axeltree Company Est 1840, was a large steelworks situated in Wednesbury, West Midlands, England. It employed hundreds of local people from its opening during the 19th century, and was a key player in the Industrial Revolution that spread across the Black...
. However there was not the integration of facilities in the BSA~Daimler case, nor was there a reorganisation of either BSA or Daimler and in view of the earlier criticism contained in the 1909 report of the investigation committee, BSA continued to produce cars of their own using Daimler engines. In 1913 Daimler employed 5,000 workers to manufacture 1,000 vehicles an indication that things were not well.
Steel bodies
In 1912, BSA would be one of two automobile manufacturers pioneering the use of all-steel bodies, joining HupmobileHupmobile
The Hupmobile was an automobile built from 1909 through 1940 by the Hupp Motor Company, which was located at 345 Bellevue Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Its first car, the Model 20, was introduced to the public at the Detroit Auto Show in February 1909...
in the US.
First World War
During the First World War, the company returned to arms manufacture and greatly expanded its operations. BSA produced rifleRifle
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...
s, Lewis gun
Lewis Gun
The Lewis Gun is a World War I–era light machine gun of American design that was perfected and widely used by the British Empire. It was first used in combat in World War I, and continued in service with a number of armed forces through to the end of the Korean War...
s, shells
Shell (projectile)
A shell is a payload-carrying projectile, which, as opposed to shot, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage sometimes includes large solid projectiles properly termed shot . Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used...
, motorcycles and other vehicles for the war effort.
Inter-war years
Motorcycles
In November 1919 BSA launched their first 50 degree vee-twin, Model EBSA Model E
The BSA Model E was a British V twin motorcycle manufactured by Birmingham Small Arms Company at their factory in Armoury Road, Small Heath, Birmingham from 1919...
, 770cc side valve (6-7 hp) motorcycle for the 1920 season. The machine had interchangeable valves, total loss oil system with mechanical pump and an emergency hand one. Retail price was £130. Other features were Amac
Amal (motorcycle)
AMAL is a British carburettor trademark. AMAL were the suppliers of carburettors to the British motorcycle industry and their products were present on the products of the largest British motorcycle manufacturers such as BSA and AMC...
carburettor, chain drive, choice of magneto
Magneto
A magneto is a type of electrical generator.Magneto may also refer to:* Magneto , permanent magnetic alternating current rotary generator* ignition magneto, magnetos on internal combustion engines...
or Magdyno, 7-plate clutch, 3 speed gear box with kickstarter
Kick start
Kick start refers to a method of starting an internal combustion engine by pushing a ratcheting lever with one's foot. Kick start mechanisms were almost universally a part of motorcycle engines before the mid-1970s, and were phased out of production over the next twenty years or so as electric...
and new type of cantilever fork
Aviation
During the war Daimler had built enormous numbers of aero engines and aircraft and by the end was building 80 Airco de Havilland bombers a month. In February 1920 BSA amalgamated with what was the world's largest aircraft manufacturer, Aircraft Manufacturing Company (Airco)Airco
The Aircraft Manufacturing Company Limited was established in 1912 by George Holt Thomas at The Hyde in Hendon, north London, England.-Geoffrey de Havilland:...
, Airco's main plant at Hendon had employed between 7,000 and 8,000 people. The Airco group of companies had turned out a new aircraft every 45 minutes.
Within days BSA discovered Airco was in a far more serious financial state than George Holt Thomas
George Holt Thomas
George Holt Thomas aviation industry pioneer and newspaper proprietor. Holt Thomas founded, in 1911, the business which became Aircraft Manufacturing Company Limited or Airco....
had revealed. Holt Thomas was immediately dropped from his new seat on the BSA board and all BSA's new acquisitions were placed in the hands of a liquidator. Some of the businesses were allowed to continue for some years, Aircraft Transport and Travel
Aircraft Transport and Travel
Aircraft Transport and Travel Limited was a British airline formed during the First World War, a subsidiary of Airco. It was the first airline to operate a regular international flight .-History:...
's assets being eventually rolled into Daimler Air Hire to make Daimler Airway Limited
Daimler Airway
Daimler Airway was an airline subsidiary of BSA group's Daimler Motor Company created to use some of the assets of the failed ventures Airco and its subsidiary Aircraft Transport and Travel acquired by BSA in February 1920.-History:...
. BSA failed to pay a dividend for the following four years while it tried to recover from its losses. Some relief was achieved when in March 1924 Daimler Airway and its management became the major constituent of Imperial Airways
Imperial Airways
Imperial Airways was the early British commercial long range air transport company, operating from 1924 to 1939 and serving parts of Europe but especially the Empire routes to South Africa, India and the Far East...
.
As well as the Daimler car range, BSA Cycles Ltd re-entered the car market under the BSA name in 1921 with a V-twin engined light car followed by four-cylinder models up to 1926, when the name was temporarily dropped. In 1929 a new range of 3 and 4 wheel cars appeared and production of these continued until 1936.
By 1930 the BSA Group's primary activities were BSA motorcycles and Daimler vehicles.
Car production under the BSA name ceased in the 1930s.
Lanchester
In 1931 the Lanchester Motor CompanyLanchester Motor Company
The Lanchester Motor Company Limited was a car manufacturer based until 1930 at Armourer Mills, Montgomery Street, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, England. It operated from 1895 to 1955....
at Sparkbrook was acquired and production of their cars transferred to Daimler's Coventry works.
Armaments
In the 1930s, the board of directors authorised expenditure on bringing their arms-making equipment back to use - it had been stored at company expense since the end of the Great War in the belief that BSA might again be called upon to perform its patriotic duty.Second World War
By the outbreak of the Second World War, BSA Guns Ltd at Small Heath, was the only factory producing rifles in the UK. The Royal Ordnance FactoriesRoyal Ordnance Factory
Royal Ordnance Factories was the collective name of the UK government's munitions factories in and after World War II. Until privatisation in 1987 they were the responsibility of the Ministry of Supply and later the Ministry of Defence....
would not begin production until 1941. BSA Guns Ltd was also producing .303 Browning machine gun
M1919 Browning machine gun
The M1919 Browning is a .30 caliber medium machine gun that was widely used during the 20th century. It was used as a light infantry, coaxial, mounted, aircraft, and anti-aircraft machine gun by the U.S. and many other countries, especially during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War...
s for the Air Ministry
Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the British Government with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964...
at the rate of 600 guns per week in March 1939 and Browning production was to peak at 16,390 per month by March 1942. The armed forces had chosen the 500 cc side-valve BSA M20
BSA M20
The BSA M20 was a British motorcycle made by Birmingham Small Arms Company at their factory in Small Heath, Birmingham. Initially viewed as a near failure by the War Office in 1936, the M20 evolved into one of the longest serving motorcycles in the history of British military motorcycling, as well...
motorcycle as their preferred machine. On the outbreak of war the Government requisitioned the 690 machines BSA had in stock as well as placing an order for another 8,000 machines. South Africa, Eire, India, Sweden and Holland also wanted machines.
The Government passed the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939
Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939
The Emergency Powers Act 1939 was emergency legislation passed just prior to the outbreak of World War II by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to enable the British Government to take up emergency powers to prosecute the war effectively...
on 24 August allowing the drafting of defence regulations affecting food, travel, requisitioning of land and supplies, manpower and agricultural production. A second Emergency Powers (Defence) Act was passed on 22 May 1940 allowing the conscription of labour. The fall of France had not been anticipated in Government planning and the encirclement of a large part of the British Expeditionary Force
British Expeditionary Force (World War II)
The British Expeditionary Force was the British force in Europe from 1939–1940 during the Second World War. Commanded by General Lord Gort, the BEF constituted one-tenth of the defending Allied force....
into the Dunkirk pocket resulted in a hasty evacuation of that part of the B.E.F following the abandonment of their equipment. The parlous state of affairs "no arms, no transport, no equipment" in the face of the threat of imminent invasion of Britain by Nazi
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
forces was recorded by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke
Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke
Field Marshal The Rt. Hon. Alan Francis Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, KG, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO & Bar , was a senior commander in the British Army. He was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the Second World War, and was promoted to Field Marshal in 1944...
in his diary entries of the 1/2 July 1940.
The creation of the Home Guard (initially as the Local Defence Volunteers) following Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
's broadcast appeal to the Nation on Tuesday 14 May 1940 also created further demand for arms production to equip this new force. BSA, as the only rifle producer in Britain, had to step up to the mark and the workforce voluntarily went onto a 7 day week. Motorcycle production was also stepped up from 500 to 1,000 machines per week which meant a finished machine coming off the production line every 5 minutes. The motorcycle department had been left intact in 1939 due to demand which was doubled following Dunkirk. At the same time BSA staff were providing lectures and demonstrations on motorcycle riding and maintenance to 250,000 officers and men in all parts of the UK.
The BSA factory at Small Heath was bombed
The Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...
by the Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
on 26 August 1940 resulting in one H.E.bomb and a shower of incendiaries hitting the main barrel mill which was the only one operating on service rifles in the country, causing the unaffordable loss of 750 machine tool
Machine tool
A machine tool is a machine, typically powered other than by human muscle , used to make manufactured parts in various ways that include cutting or certain other kinds of deformation...
s but fortunately no loss of life. Two further air raids
Birmingham Blitz
The Birmingham Blitz was the heavy bombing by the Nazi German Luftwaffe of the city of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, beginning on 9 August 1940 and ending on 23 April 1943...
took place on 19 and 22 November 1940. The air raid of 19 November did the most damage, causing loss of production and trapping hundreds of workers. Two BSA night-shift electricians, Alf Stevens and Alf Goodwin, helped rescue their fellow workers. Alf Stevens was awarded the George Medal
George Medal
The George Medal is the second level civil decoration of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth.The GM was instituted on 24 September 1940 by King George VI. At this time, during the height of The Blitz, there was a strong desire to reward the many acts of civilian courage...
for his selfless acts of bravery in the rescue and Alf Goodwin was awarded the British Empire Medal
British Empire Medal
The Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Meritorious Service, usually known as the British Empire Medal , is a British medal awarded for meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown...
. Workers involved in the works Civil Defence
Air Raid Precautions
Air Raid Precautions was an organisation in the United Kingdom set up as an aid in the prelude to the Second World War dedicated to the protection of civilians from the danger of air-raids. It was created in 1924 as a response to the fears about the growing threat from the development of bomber...
were brought in to help search for and clear bodies to get the plant back into production. The net effect of the November raids was to destroy machine shops in the four-storey 1915 building, the original 1863 gunsmiths' building and nearby buildings, 1,600 machine tools, kill 53 employees, injure 89, 30 of them seriously and halt rifle production for three months.
The Government Ministry of Supply
Ministry of Supply
The Ministry of Supply was a department of the UK Government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. There was, however, a separate ministry responsible for aircraft production and the Admiralty retained...
and BSA immediately began a process of production dispersal throughout Britain. Factories were set up at Tipton
Tipton
Tipton is a town in the Sandwell borough of the West Midlands, England, with a population of around 47,000. Tipton is located about halfway between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. It is a part of the West Midlands conurbation and is a part of the Black Country....
, Dudley
Dudley
Dudley is a large town in the West Midlands county of England. At the 2001 census , the Dudley Urban Sub Area had a population of 194,919, making it the 26th largest settlement in England, the second largest town in the United Kingdom behind Reading, and the largest settlement in the UK without...
, Smethwick
Smethwick
Smethwick is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands of England. It is situated on the edge of the city of Birmingham, within the historic boundaries of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire....
, Blackheath
Blackheath, West Midlands
Blackheath is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, West Midlands, England.-Establishment:Before 1841, Bleak Heath or Blake Heath was a small group of farm houses and inns on the turnpike road from Oldbury to Halesowen, within Rowley Regis...
, Lye
Lye, West Midlands
Lye is a suburban area of the Black Country in England, between Halesowen and Stourbridge in Dudley Metropolitan Borough, West Midlands. It was formerly a village in the parish of Oldswinford, Worcestershire...
, Kidderminster
Kidderminster
Kidderminster is a town, in the Wyre Forest district of Worcestershire, England. It is located approximately seventeen miles south-west of Birmingham city centre and approximately fifteen miles north of Worcester city centre. The 2001 census recorded a population of 55,182 in the town...
, Stourport
Stourport-on-Severn
Stourport-on-Severn, often shortened to Stourport, is a town and civil parish in the Wyre Forest District of North Worcestershire, England, a few miles to the south of Kidderminster and down stream on the River Severn from Bewdley...
, Tyseley
Tyseley
Tyseley is a district in the southern half of the city of Birmingham, England, near the Coventry Road and the districts of Small Heath and Yardley...
, and Bromsgrove
Bromsgrove
Bromsgrove is a town in Worcestershire, England. The town is about north east of Worcester and south west of Birmingham city centre. It had a population of 29,237 in 2001 with a small ethnic minority and is in Bromsgrove District.- History :Bromsgrove is first documented in the early 9th century...
to manufacture Browning machine guns, Stoke
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
, Corsham
Corsham
Corsham is a historic market town and civil parish in north west Wiltshire, England. It is at the south western extreme of the Cotswolds, just off the A4 which was formerly the main turnpike road from London to Bristol, between Bath and Chippenham ....
, and Newcastle-under-Lyme
Newcastle-under-Lyme
Newcastle-under-Lyme is a market town in Staffordshire, England, and is the principal town of the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme. It is part of The Potteries Urban Area and North Staffordshire. In the 2001 census the town had a population of 73,944...
produced the Hispano cannon
Hispano-Suiza HS.404
The Hispano-Suiza HS.404 was an autocannon widely used as both an aircraft and land weapon in the 20th century by British, American, French, and numerous other military services. The cannon is also referred to as Birkigt type 404, after its designer. Firing a 20 mm caliber projectile, it delivered...
, Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
and Studley Road
Redditch
Redditch is a town and local government district in north-east Worcestershire, England, approximately south of Birmingham. The district had a population of 79,216 in 2005. In the 19th century it became the international centre for the needle and fishing tackle industry...
produced the Besa machine gun
Besa machine gun
The Besa Machine Gun was a British version of the Czechoslovak ZB-53 air-cooled, belt-fed machine-gun, which in the Czechoslovak army was marked as the TK vz. 37...
, Ruislip
Ruislip
Ruislip is a suburban area, centred on an old village in Greater London, and is part of the London Borough of Hillingdon.It was formerly also a parish covering the neighbouring areas of Eastcote, Northwood, Ruislip Manor and South Ruislip in the area. The parish appears in the Domesday Book, and...
produced the Oerlikon 20mm cannon, Stafford
Stafford
Stafford is the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies approximately north of Wolverhampton and south of Stoke-on-Trent, adjacent to the M6 motorway Junction 13 to Junction 14...
produced rocket projectiles
RP-3
The RP-3 , was a British rocket used in the Second World War. Though primarily an air-to-ground weapon, it saw limited use in other roles. Its 60 lb warhead gave rise to the alternative name of the "60 lb rocket"; the 25 lb solid-shot armour piercing variant was referred to as the "25 lb rocket"...
, Tamworth
Tamworth
Tamworth is a town and local government district in Staffordshire, England, located north-east of Birmingham city centre and north-west of London. The town takes its name from the River Tame, which flows through the town, as does the River Anker...
produced two-pounder gun carriages
Ordnance QF 2 pounder
The Ordnance QF 2-pounder was a British anti-tank and vehicle-mounted gun, employed in the Second World War. It was actively used in the Battle of France, and during the North Africa campaign...
, Mansfield
Mansfield
Mansfield is a town in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the main town in the Mansfield local government district. Mansfield is a part of the Mansfield Urban Area....
produced the Boys Anti-tank gun and Shirley
Solihull
Solihull is a town in the West Midlands of England with a population of 94,753. It is a part of the West Midlands conurbation and is located 9 miles southeast of Birmingham city centre...
produced rifles. These were dispersal factories which were in addition to Small Heath and the other BSA factories opened in the two years following the 1940 blitz. At its peak Small Heath was running 67 factories engaged in war production. BSA operations were also dispersed to other companies under licence.
In 1941 BSA was approached to produce a new pedal cycle with a maximum weight allowance of only 22 lb especially for airborne
Airborne forces
Airborne forces are military units, usually light infantry, set up to be moved by aircraft and 'dropped' into battle. Thus they can be placed behind enemy lines, and have an ability to deploy almost anywhere with little warning...
use. This required a new concept in frame design which BSA found, producing a machine which weighed 21 lb, one pound less than the design specification and which also exceeded the design requirement for an effective life of 50 miles many times over. Over 60,000 folding bicycle
Folding bicycle
A folding bicycle is a bicycle designed to fold into a compact form, facilitating transport and storage. When folded, the bikes can be more easily carried into buildings and workplaces or onto public transportation or more easily stored in compact living quarters or aboard a car, boat or plane...
s were produced, a figure equal to half the total production of military bicycles during World War II. BSA also produced folding motorcycles
Welbike
The Welbike was a British single-seat motorcycle devised during World War Two at Station IX — the "Inter Services Research Bureau" — based at Welwyn, UK, for use by Special Operations Executive . It has the distinction of being the smallest motorcycle ever used by the British Armed Forces,...
for the Airborne Division. In late 1942 BSA examined the Special Operations Executive
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
designed Welgun with a view to manufacture. BSA were willing to manufacture the gun in the quantities required starting April 1943 but the cheaper and less accurate Sten Mk IV was adopted for production by the Ministry of Supply. BSA bought the Sunbeam
Sunbeam (motorcycle)
Sunbeam was a British manufacturing marque that produced bicycles and motorcycles from 1912 to 1956. Originally independent, it was ultimately owned by BSA...
motorcycles and bicycle business from Associated Motor Cycles Ltd
Associated Motor Cycles
Associated Motor Cycles was a British motorcycle manufacturer founded by the Collier brothers as a parent company for the Matchless and AJS motorcycle companies...
in 1943 and then Ariel Motors Ltd
Ariel Motorcycles
Ariel Motorcycles was a British motorcycle manufacturer based in Bournbrook, Birmingham. It was one of the leading innovators in British motorcycling, and was part of the Ariel marque. The company was sold to BSA in 1944 and the name was discontinued in 1970...
in 1944. During the course of the conflict BSA produced 1,250,000 Lee Enfield .303 service rifles, 404,383 Sten
Sten
The STEN was a family of British 9 mm submachine guns used extensively by British and Commonwealth forces throughout World War II and the Korean War...
sub-machine guns, 468,098 Browning machine guns plus spares equivalent to another 100,000, 42,532 Hispano cannon, 32,971 Oerlikon cannon, 59,322 7.9 mm Besa machine guns, 3,218 15 mm Besa machine guns, 68,882 Boys Anti-tank guns, 126,334 motorcycles, 128,000 military bicycles (over 60,000 of which were folding paratrooper bicycles), 10,000,000 shell fuse cases, 3,485,335 magazines and 750,000 anti-aircraft rockets were supplied to the armed forces.
At the same time other parts of the Group were having similar problems. Before World War II Daimler had been linked with other Coventry motor manufacturers in a government-backed scheme for aero engine manufacture and had been allocated two shadow factories. Apart from this, BSA-owned Daimler was producing Scout Cars
Daimler Dingo
-external links :*** has a Daimler Dingo in its exposition.* wwiivehicles.com**...
and Daimler Mk I Armoured Cars which had been designed by BSA at Small Heath not Coventry as well as gun turrets, gun parts, tank transmissions, rocket projectiles and other munitions. This activity had not gone unnoticed by the enemy, which made Radford Works a target in the Coventry air raids
Coventry Blitz
The Coventry blitz was a series of bombing raids that took place in the English city of Coventry. The city was bombed many times during the Second World War by the German Air Force...
. Radford Works received direct hits in four separate air raids during 1940. None of these attacks were to seriously disrupt production, however two more serious air raids were carried out in April 1941 which destroyed half the factory. In all it is estimated that 170 bombs containing 52,000 lbs of explosive were dropped on Radford Works as well as the thousands of incendiaries. Like BSA, Daimler had to find dispersal units. A back-handed compliment was paid by Field Marshal Rommel
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....
to the workers at Radford Works when he used a captured Daimler Scout to escape following his defeat at El Alamein
Second Battle of El Alamein
The Second Battle of El Alamein marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. The battle took place over 20 days from 23 October – 11 November 1942. The First Battle of El Alamein had stalled the Axis advance. Thereafter, Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery...
.
Post-war
As the result of increased post war demand the Small Heath, BirminghamSmall Heath, Birmingham
Small Heath is an inner-city area within the city of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. It is situated on and around the A45 ....
factory was turned over entirely to motorcycle production.
BSA produced the first Sunbeam bicycle catalogue in 1949 and produced its own '4 Star' derailleur gear with an associated splined cassette hub
Freehub
A freehub is a type of bicycle hub that incorporates a ratcheting mechanism, and the name freehub is a registered trademark of Shimano. A set of sprockets are mounted onto a splined shaft of the freehub to engage the chain...
and 4 sprocket cassette. This design was different from the 1930s Bayliss Wiley cassette hub which had a threaded sprocket carrier. BSA bought New Hudson motorcycle and bicycle business in 1950 and followed this up in 1951 with the purchase of Triumph Motorcycles which brought Jack Sangster
Jack Sangster
John Young Sangster was an industrialist who became an important figure in the history of the British motorcycle industry. He is more commonly known as Jack Sangster.-Early life:...
onto the BSA board. The affect of this acquisition was to make BSA into the largest producer of motorcycles in the world at that time.
1952 saw BSA establish a Professional Cycling Team. Bob Maitland
Bob Maitland
Robert "Bob" John Maitland was a British racing cyclist. He won national championships in Britain, tackled long-distance records, was the best-placed British rider in the 1948 Olympic road race, and rode for Britain in the Tour de France...
a successful amateur cyclist and the highest placed British finisher in the 1948 Olympic Games road race and now an independent rider in the BSA team was a BSA employee working in the design office as a draughtsman. It was Bob Maitland who was responsible for the design of post war BSA range of lightweight sports bicycles based on his knowledge of cycling. Bob Maitland also made some of the components used on the bicycles of the professional team which were not standard production machines. In the 1952 Tour of Britain
Tour of Britain
The Tour of Britain is a cycle race, conducted over several stages, in which participants race from place to place across parts of Great Britain....
Road Race run between Friday 22 August and Saturday 6 September, involving 14 individual stages and covering a total race distance of 1,470 miles, the BSA team of Bob Maitland, “Tiny” Thomas, Pete Proctor, Alf Newman and Stan Jones won the overall team race and Pete Proctor “King of the Mountains” classification. The riders also enjoyed success on the individual stages of the race. The team competed in four further events, 14 September Tour of the Chilterns, 1st “Tiny” Thomas and Team Prize, 21 September Weston-Super-Mare Grand Prix, Team Prize, 28 September Staffordshire Grand Prix, 1st Bob Maitland and Team Prize, 5 October Tour Revenge Race, Dublin, 1st “Tiny” Thomas and Team prize.
In 1953 BSA withdrew motorcycle production from BSA Cycles Ltd, the company it has established in 1919, by creating BSA Motorcycles Ltd. BSA also produced its 100,000th BSA Bantam
BSA Bantam
The BSA Bantam is a two-stroke unit construction motorcycle that was produced by the Birmingham Small Arms Company from 1948 until 1971...
motorcycle, a fact celebrated at the 1953 motorcycle show with a visit by Sir Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
to the BSA stand. In 1953 the BSA Professional Cycling Team was managed by Syd Cozens. Successes were 5/6 April Bournmouth 2 Day Road Race, 1st Bob Maitland, 12 April Dover to London 63 Miles Road Race, 1st Stan Jones, 31 May Langsett 90 Miles Road Race, 1st Bob Maitland and “King of the Mountains”, 7 June Tour of the Wrekin, 1st Bob Maitland, 12 July Severn Valley 100 Miles Road Race, 1st “Tiny” Thomas, 19 July Jackson Trophy, Newcastle, Team Prize, 9 August Les Adams Memorial 80 Miles Road Race, 1st Alf Newman, Team Prize, “King of the Mountains” Arthur Ilsley, 30 August Weston-Super-Mare 100 Miles Grand Prix, 1st Bob Maitland, Team Prize. The team also competed in the 1,624 mile, 12 stage, 1953 Tour of Britain Road Race. The 1953 line up had changed as Arthur Ilsley replaced Pete Proctor in the team. “Tiny” Thomas won the overall individual classification, the Team were runners-up in the team competition and Arthur Ilsley was 3rd in the “King of the Mountains” competition. Bob Maitland also had notable success by winning the Independent National Championship.
1954 saw the introduction of the BSA Quick Release 3 Speed hub gear. It was a split axle three speed gear intended for use with bicycles equipped with oil bath chainguards. The original BSA 3 speed hub gear had been made under licence from the Three-Speed Gear Syndicate since 1907. The design was later to be classified as the Sturmey-Archer
Sturmey-Archer
Sturmey-Archer is a manufacturing company originally from Nottingham, England. It primarily produces bicycle hub gears but has also produced motorcycle hubs....
'Type X', but all BSA hub gear production ceased in 1955
Sir Bernard Docker
Bernard Docker
Sir Bernard Dudley Frank Docker was an English industrialist.Bernard Docker was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham, the only child of Frank Dudley Docker an industrialist....
remained chairman of BSA until 1956 when the BSA removed him. In an acrimonious dispute conducted in the media the matter was brought to the BSA shareholders at the Annual General Meeting where the decision of the Board was upheld. Another significant departure for the fortune of the BSA Group but less controversial was the retirement on ill health grounds of James Leek CBE, Managing Director from 1939 until his retirement. Sir Bernard Docker was replaced as Chairman of the BSA Board by Jack Sangster.
The BSA bicycle division, BSA Cycles Ltd., including the BSA cycle dealer network was sold to Raleigh in 1957. Raleigh initially continued bicycle production in Birmingham at Coventry Road, Sheldon, Birmingham 26 into the early 1960s using up BSA parts but as time went on more stock Raleigh parts and fittings were used, some continuing to bear the 'piled arms' stamp. TI Group owners of the British Cycle Corporation bought Raleigh in 1960 thus gaining access to the BSA brand. Bicycles bearing the BSA name are currently manufactured and distributed within India by TI Cycles of India
TI Cycles of India
TI Cycles of India is a bicycle manufacturer based in India. Established in 1949 by the Murugappa Group and Sir Ivan Stedeford of Tube Investments Group in UK, TI Cycles is the maker of brands like Hercules, BSA and Philips cycles. It has manufacturing plants at Ambattur near Chennai, Nasik in...
but have no direct connection to the original Birmingham BSA company.
In 1960, Daimler
Daimler Motor Company
The Daimler Motor Company Limited was an independent British motor vehicle manufacturer founded in London by H J Lawson in 1896, which set up its manufacturing base in Coventry. The right to the use of the name Daimler had been purchased simultaneously from Gottlieb Daimler and Daimler Motoren...
was sold off to Jaguar
Jaguar (car)
Jaguar Cars Ltd, known simply as Jaguar , is a British luxury car manufacturer, headquartered in Whitley, Coventry, England. It is part of the Jaguar Land Rover business, a subsidiary of the Indian company Tata Motors....
.
1961 was the centenary year of the BSA Group and in recognition of this milestone the company magazine produced an anniversary issue of BSA Group News in June BSA Centenary 1861–1961 in which many of the achievements of the Group were celebrated. This year also saw the end of military rifle production, however BSA still continued to make sporting guns. In 1986 BSA Guns was liquidated, the assets bought and renamed BSA Guns (UK) Ltd. The company continues to make air rifles and shotguns, and is still based in Small Heath in Birmingham.
Norton-Villiers-Triumph
The Group continued to expand and acquire throughout the 1950s, but by 1965 competition from Japan (in the shape of companies like HondaHonda
is a Japanese public multinational corporation primarily known as a manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles.Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than...
, Yamaha
Yamaha
Yamaha may refer to:* Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services** Yamaha Motor Company, a Japanese motorized vehicle-producing company...
and Suzuki
Suzuki
is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Hamamatsu, Japan that specializes in manufacturing compact automobiles and 4x4 vehicles, a full range of motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles , outboard marine engines, wheelchairs and a variety of other small internal combustion engines...
) and Europe from Jawa
Jawa Motors
Jawa is a motorcycle manufacturer in the Czech republic, formerly Czechoslovakia. The name was created after its founder, Frantisek Janecek, bought the motorcycle division of Wanderer in 1929 , by concatenating the first letters of Janeček and Wanderer...
/ CZ
Ceská Zbrojovka Strakonice
Česká zbrojovka is a Czech firearms manufacturer also known for making ČZ motorcycles. ČZ was established as a branch of the Škoda Works Armament in Strakonice, Czechoslovakia in September 1919.-History:...
, Bultaco
Bultaco
Bultaco was a Spanish manufacturer of two-stroke motorcycles from 1958 to 1983.-Origins:The origin of the Bultaco motorcycle company dates back to May 1958. Francisco "Paco" Bultó was a director of the Montesa motorcycle company founded in 1944. After several years of steady growth and road racing...
and Husqvarna
Husqvarna Motorcycles
Husqvarna Motorcycles, a subsidiary of BMW, is a company manufacturing motocross, enduro and supermoto motorcycles. The company began producing motorcycles in 1903 at Huskvarna, Sweden, as a branch of the Husqvarna armament firm which had supplied the Swedish army with rifles since 1689.-History:As...
was eroding BSA's market share. The BSA (and Triumph range) were no longer aligned with the markets; moped
Moped
Mopeds are a type of low-powered motorcycle designed to provide economical and relatively safe transport with minimal licensing requirements.Mopeds were once all equipped with bicycle-like pedals , but moped has been increasingly applied by governments to vehicles without pedals, based on their...
s were displacing scooter
Scooter (motorcycle)
A scooter is a motorcycle with step-through frame and a platform for the operator's feet. Elements of scooter design have been present in some of the earliest motorcycles, and motorcycles identifiable as scooters have been made from 1914 or earlier...
sales; superbike engine capacity had risen to 1000 cc, and the trials and scrambles areas were now the preserve of European two-strokes. Some poor marketing decisions and expensive projects contributed to substantial losses. For example, the development and production investment of the Ariel 3, an ultra stable 3 wheel moped, was not recouped by sales; the loss has been estimated at £2 million.
In 1968, BSA announced many changes to its product line of singles, twins and the new three-cylinder machine named the "Rocket three" for the 1969 model year. It now concentrated on the more promising USA, and to a lesser extent, Canadian, markets. However, despite the adding of modern accessories, for example, turn signals and even differing versions of the A65 twins for home and export sale, the damage had been done and the end was near.
Reorganisation in 1971 concentrated motorcycle production at Meriden, Triumph's site, with production of components and engines at BSA's Small Heath. At the same time there were redundancies
Layoff
Layoff , also called redundancy in the UK, is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or a group of employees for business reasons, such as when certain positions are no longer necessary or when a business slow-down occurs...
and the selling of assets. Barclays Bank arranged financial backing to the tune of £10 million.
Upgrades and service bulletins continued until 1972, but the less service-intensive Japanese bikes had by then flooded the market on both sides of the Atlantic. The merger with Norton Villers was started in late 1972, and for a brief time a Norton 500 single was built with the B50
BSA B50
The BSA B50 is a motorcycle made by BSA at their factory in Small Heath, Birmingham. The last of the big capacity unit singles from the Birmingham Small Arms company, it had a 499 cc alloy engine with a bore of and a stroke of , a short wheelbase and unusually high centre of gravity...
-based unit-single engine, but few if any were sold publicly. The BSA unit single B50's 500 cc enjoyed much improvement in the hands of the CCM motorcycle company allowing the basic BSA design to continue until the mid to late 1970s in a competitive form all over Europe.
By 1972, BSA was so moribund that, with bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
imminent, its motorcycle businesses were merged (as part of a government-initiated rescue plan) with the Manganese Bronze
Manganese Bronze
Manganese Bronze Holdings PLC is an engineering company based in Coventry, England. Since the sale of its components division in 2003 the company has only one operating division—LTI Limited, trading as The London Taxi Company—which manufactures and retails London Black Taxis.The London...
company, Norton-Villiers
Norton-Villiers
Norton-Villiers was a British motorcycle manufacturer formed in the 1960s following the collapse of Associated Motorcycles. With the general decline of the British motorcycle industry it was combined with the remnants of BSA to form Norton-Villiers-Triumph....
, to become Norton-Villiers-Triumph with the intention of producing and marketing Norton and Triumph motorcycles at home and abroad. In exchange for its motorcycle businesses, Manganese Bronze received BSA Group's non-motorcycle-related divisions—namely, Carbodies
Carbodies
Carbodies LImited is a British company based at Holyhead Road, Coventry. It started business as a coachbuilder, and now, as The London Taxi Company is best known for its production of London taxicabs.-History:...
. Although the BSA name was left out of the new company's name, a few products continued to be made carrying it until 1973. The final range was just four models: Gold Star 500, 650 Thunderbolt/Lightning and the 750 cc Rocket Three.
However, the plan involved the axing of some brands, large redundancies and consolidation of production at two sites. This scheme to rescue and combine Norton, BSA and Triumph failed in the face of worker resistance. Norton's and BSA's factories were eventually shut down, while Triumph staggered on to fail four years later.
Motorcycles
Rights went to Norton Villiers Triumph and on its liquidation were purchased by a new company formed by management and named BSA Company LimitedBSA Company
BSA Company Limited was a motorcycle manufacturer which purchased the rights to its BSA name from Birmingham Small Arms Company's successor, Dennis Poore's Manganese Bronze on the liquidation of Norton Villiers Triumph.-Origin:...
.
Guns
Rights were acquired by Gamo for its new subsidiary BSA Guns (UK) LimitedBicycles
According to Charles Spencer, BSA was manufacturing the "Delta" bicycle circa 1869. In 1880 the company was approached to manufacture the "Otto Dicycle". An initial contract was signed to produce 210 and a further contract followed for a further 200. In all it is believed that a total of 953 Otto machines were made. BSA then went into bicycle production on their own account, the first machines to their own specification being exhibited at the 1881 Stanley Show. BSA went on to design and manufacture a "safety" bicycle (patent:15,342 of 1884). BSA was also producing tricycles and a licence was obtained in 1885 to manufacture ball bearings. BSA ceased bicycle manufacture in 1887 because of the demand for arms. Bicycle component manufacture commenced in 1894 and BSA continued to supply the bicycle trade up to 1936. The company recommenced bicycle manufacture on their own account again in 1908 and these were exhibited at the Stanley Show in 1909. Bicycle manufacture was what led BSA into motorcycles. BSA produced bicycles for both the police and military and notably a folding bicycle for the British Army during World War I http://www.rifleman.org.uk/BSA_early_history.htm and the more well known folding Paratroopers bicycle during World War II. BSA supplied the Irish Army with bicycles after 1922.BSA manufactured a range of bicycles from utility roadsters through to racing bicycles. The BSA range of Sports bicycles expanded in the 1930s following the granting of a patent for a new lighter design of seat lug in 1929 and tandems were introduced into the BSA bicycle range as well. BSA had a reputation for quality and durability and their components were more expensive that either Chater-Lea or Brampton. BSA launched a high end club cyclists machine in the early 1930s initially branded as the "Super-eeze". Never slow to avail of publicity BSA sponsored the great Australian cyclist Hubert Opperman
Hubert Opperman
Sir Hubert Ferdinand Opperman, OBE , referred to as Oppy by Australian and French crowds, was an Australian cyclist and politician, whose endurance cycling feats in the 1920s and 1930s earned him international acclaim....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/3415216471/in/set-72157603949012058/ and re-branded the top of the range machine the "Opperman" model http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/2777313275/in/set-72157606633777810/http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/2777318159/in/set-72157606633777810/. A less expensive range of clubman lightweight machines was introduced from 1936 with the "Cyclo" 3 speed derailleur equipped "Clubman". Subtle changes were made to the range, most models being equipped with "Russ" patent forks http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/4027019497/in/set-72157606633777810/ and some models were made for only two seasons. This all stopped around September 1939 with the outbreak of war. A revised catalogue with a much reduced range was issued in March 1940 which also saw the launch of the BSA "Streamlight" model http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/3041830262/in/set-72157606633777810/. A novel all white bicycle http://www.flickr.com/photos/75395133@N00/3040988703/in/set-72157606633777810/ was produced for the blackout but had disappeared from a severely reduced bicycle range the details of which were circulated to dealers from December 1941. BSA had ceased production of their 3 speed hub gear in 1939 and production appears to have started again by 1945 although with a black finish instead of chromium plating. BSA bought Sunbeam in 1943 and produced Sunbeam bicycles using up existing frames and parts and using BSA components for the missing bits. The first BSA produced Sunbeam catalogue was published in 1949
Post war BSA expanded their bicycle range but faced problems of shortages of raw materials such as steel and was required to export a lot of their manufactured output in order to get a Government licence to purchase the necessary raw materials. The company moved bicycle production to the new Waverley Works after World War II. BSA continued to innovate introducing the 4 Star derailleur gear in 1949 along with an associated 4 speed 'unit' or cassette hub. The derailleur design was altered from 1950 and was certainly available up to 1953 but was not a great success. BSA bought New Hudson in 1950 and started to manufacture and sell New Hudson branded machines as well as Sunbeam. It appears that the top of the range BSA lightweight club cyclist machine was the "Gold Column" and this appears to have been changed into the BSA "Tour of Britain" model following the success of the BSA Professional Cycling Team in the 1952 Tour of Britain race. The "Tour of Britain" model was heavily promoted in the BSA 1953 sales literature. The factory made "Tour of Britain" model was not the same as those ridden by the professional team. Only eight machines were crafted for the professional team and none of the components appear to have been standard BSA parts. 1953 saw BSA separate the bicycle / motorcar and motorcycle business into different holdings.
The good times were coming to an end and demand for bicycles fell with the end of rationing in 1954 http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_3818000/3818563.stm. James Leek, managing director of BSA Cycles Ltd was suffering ill health and he retired in 1956, the same year the BSA Chairman, Sir Bernard Docker, was removed from the BSA Board. Jack Sangster
Jack Sangster
John Young Sangster was an industrialist who became an important figure in the history of the British motorcycle industry. He is more commonly known as Jack Sangster.-Early life:...
who had joined the BSA Board in 1951 following the purchase of his company Triumph Motorcycles became Chairman. The bicycle manufacturing business BSA Cycles Ltd was sold to Raleigh Industries in 1957.
Motorcycles
BSA Motorcycles were made by BSA Cycles Ltd, under the BSA parent up until 1953 when the motorcycle business was moved into holding BSA Motorcycles Ltd. The first wholly BSA motorcycle, the 3½ H.P. was built in 1910 and displayed at the first Olympia Show, London on 21 November in that year. Sir Hallewell RogersHallewell Rogers
Sir Hallewell Rogers was a British Conservative politician.Rogers was Lord Mayor of Birmingham in 1904. He was appointed Honourary Colonel of the 3rd South Midland Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, in 1913....
, BSA Chairman, had informed the shareholders at the Company's 1910 AGM in Birmingham "We have decided to put a motor-bicycle on the market for the coming season....These machines will be on exhibit at the Cycle and Motor Show on November 21st, after which date we look forward to commencing delivery". The machines were available for the 1911 season and entire production sold out. BSA had previously acquired a commercially available engine in 1905 and fitted it to one of their bicycle frames and discovered at first hand the problems which needed to be overcome. BSA Cycles Ltd was set up as a subsidiary company in 1919 under Managing Director Charles Hyde to manufacture both bicycles and motorcycles.
BSA produced their only two stroke motorcycle design for the 1928 season, the 1.74 H.P. Model A28 with two speed gearbox. It was produced as the A29 and A30 the following two years and became the A31 with a three speed gearbox in 1931, the last year of production. The post war 'Bantam' was a German DKW design which was part of war reparation and it was not a true BSA design.
BSA motorcycles were sold as affordable motorcycles with reasonable performance for the average user. BSA stressed the reliability of their machines, the availability of spares and dealer support. The motorcycles were a mixture of sidevalve and OHV engines offering different performance for different roles, e.g. hauling a sidecar
Sidecar
A sidecar is a one-wheeled device attached to the side of a motorcycle, scooter, or bicycle, producing a three-wheeled vehicle.-History:A sidecar appeared in a cartoon by George Moore in the January 7, 1903, issue of the British newspaper Motor Cycling. Three weeks later, a provisional patent was...
. The bulk of use would be for commuting. BSA motorcycles were also popular with "fleet buyers" in Britain, who (for example) used the Bantams for telegram delivery for the Post Office
General Post Office
General Post Office is the name of the British postal system from 1660 until 1969.General Post Office may also refer to:* General Post Office, Perth* General Post Office, Sydney* General Post Office, Melbourne* General Post Office, Brisbane...
or motorcycle/sidecar combinations for AA patrols The Automobile Association
The Automobile Association
The Automobile Association , a British motoring association founded in 1905 was demutualised in 1999 to become a private limited company which currently provides car insurance, driving lessons, breakdown cover, loans and motoring advice, and other services...
(AA) breakdown help services. This mass market appeal meant they could claim "one in four is a BSA" on advertising.
Machines with better specifications were available for those who wanted more performance or for competition work.
Initially, after World War II, BSA motorcycles were not generally seen as racing machines, compared to the likes of Norton
Norton (motorcycle)
Norton is a British motorcycle marque, originally from Birmingham, founded in 1898 as a manufacturer of "fittings and parts for the two-wheel trade". By 1902, they had begun manufacturing motorcycles with bought-in engines. In 1908, a Norton-built engine was added to the range...
. In the immediate post war period few were entered in races such as the TT races, though this changed dramatically in the Junior Clubman event (smaller engine motorcycles racing over some 3 or 4 laps around one of the Isle of Man courses). In 1947 there were but a couple of BSA mounted riders, but by 1952 BSA were in the majority and in 1956 the makeup was 53 BSA, 1 Norton and 1 Velocette
Velocette
Velocette is the name given to motorcycles that were made by Veloce Ltd, in Hall Green, Birmingham, England. One of several motorcycle manufacturers in Birmingham, Velocette was a small, family-owned firm, selling far fewer hand-built motorcycles than the giant BSA, Norton or Triumph concerns...
.
To improve US sales, in 1954, for example, BSA entered a team of riders in the 200 mile Daytona beach race
Daytona 200
The Daytona 200 is a 68-lap, motorcycle race held annually at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida.-History:The race evolved from a beach racing venue in 1937 to the Daytona International Speedway course in 1961....
with a mixture of single cylinder Gold Stars
BSA Gold Star
The Gold Star is a motorcycle made by BSA from 1938–1963. They were 350 cc and 500 cc single-cylinder four-stroke production motorcycle known for being among the fastest bikes of the 1950s...
and twin cylinder Shooting Stars assembled by Roland Pike. The BSA team riders took first, second, third, fourth, and fifth places with two more riders finishing at 8th and 16th. This was the first case of a one brand sweep.
The BSA factory experienced success in the sport of motocross
Motocross
Motocross is a form of motorcycle sport or all-terrain vehicle racing held on enclosed off road circuits. It evolved from trials, and was called scrambles, and later motocross, combining the French moto with cross-country...
with Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith (motorcyclist)
Jeffrey Vincent Smith MBE is a former world champion motocross racer.His achievements include two FIM 500cc Motocross World Championships , two British Trials Championships, multiple British Experts Trial wins, four individual race wins in the Motocross des Nations, one Scottish Six Days Trial win...
riding a B40 to capture the 1964 and 1965 FIM
Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme
The Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme is the governing body of motorcycle racing. It represents 103 national motorcycle federations that are divided into six regional continental unions....
500 cc Motocross World Championships. It would be the last year the title would be won by a four-stroke machine until the mid-1990s.
A BSA motocross machine was often colloquially known as a "Beezer."
Birmingham rocker Steve Gibbons released a song "BSA" on his 1980 album "Saints & Sinners" as a tribute to the Gold Star. He still plays this song with his band and often performs on the Isle of Man at the TT races.
Pre World War II
- 3½ hp
- Model EBSA Model EThe BSA Model E was a British V twin motorcycle manufactured by Birmingham Small Arms Company at their factory in Armoury Road, Small Heath, Birmingham from 1919...
- Model A28
- C10 sidevalve 250 cc 1938 on design by Val Page
- G14 1000 cc V-twin
- Blue StarBSA Blue StarThe BSA Blue Star is a British motorcycle made by BSA at their factory in Small Heath, Birmingham. The Blue Star range was produced between 1932 and 1936. In 1936 a slightly uprated sports version called the BSA Empire Star was launched with the Blue Star remaining in the model range...
- Empire StarBSA Empire StarThe Empire Star was a standard motorcycle made by BSA at their factory in Small Heath, Birmingham. Named to commemorate the Siver Jubilee of King George V of the United Kingdom and advertised as The Masterpiece of the Industry, the Empire Star range was produced between 1936 and 1939, when it was...
- Silver Star
- Gold StarBSA Gold StarThe Gold Star is a motorcycle made by BSA from 1938–1963. They were 350 cc and 500 cc single-cylinder four-stroke production motorcycle known for being among the fastest bikes of the 1950s...
- Sloper
- M20 (500cc):as the WD (War Department) M20 the motorcycle of the British ArmyBritish ArmyThe British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
in World War II - M21 (600cc): the big brother of the M20, also used by the British Army in World War II
Post World War II
- A series Twins (four-stroke, pushrodOverhead valveAn overhead valve engine, also informally called pushrod engine or I-head engine, is a type of piston engine that places the camshaft within the cylinder block , and uses pushrods or rods to actuate rocker arms above the cylinder...
parallel twinsStraight-twoA straight-two engine, is a two-cylinder piston engine that has its cylinders arranged side by side....
)- A7BSA A7The BSA A7 was a British motorcycle manufactured by Birmingham Small Arms Company at their factory in Armoury Road, Small Heath, Birmingham in 1946. There were actually two versions of the A7, the original 495cc version and an improved 497cc version launched in 1950...
- A7 Shooting Star - 500cc pre-unit construction
- A10 - 650cc pre-unit construction
- A10 Golden FlashBSA Golden FlashThe BSA Golden Flash was a Birmingham Small Arms Company motorcycle. The Golden Flash was also available in black and chrome, but it was the all-over gold paint scheme that gave it the name, and made it such a popular escape from post war austerity....
- A10 Super Flash
- A10 Road Rocket
- A10 Super RocketBSA Super RocketThe BSA Super Rocket was a Birmingham Small Arms Company motorcycle that was a development of the BSA Road Rocket that evolved from the Golden Flash...
- A10 Rocket Gold StarBSA Rocket Gold StarThe BSA Rocket Gold Star is a British motorcycle that marked the final stage of development of the BSA A10 twins. With a specially tuned A10 Super Rocket engine in the well proven BSA Gold Star single frame, BSA created a very fast bike with good handling fast bike that became 'classic'...
- A10 Golden Flash
- A50 - 500cc unit construction
- A50R Royal StarBSA Royal StarThe BSA Royal Star is a British motorcycle that was a radical new design for BSA that paved the way for a whole range of very successful unit construction twins...
- A50C Cyclone
- A50W Wasp
- A50R Royal Star
- A65 - 650cc unit construction
- A65 Star TwinBSA Royal StarThe BSA Royal Star is a British motorcycle that was a radical new design for BSA that paved the way for a whole range of very successful unit construction twins...
- A65R Rocket
- A65T ThunderboltBSA ThunderboltThe BSA Thunderbolt was a British motorcycle made by BSA at their factory in Armoury Road in Small Heath, Birmingham between 1964 and 1972. Fitted with a single carburettor it was capable of over .-Development:...
- A65L Lightning
- A65S Spitfire
- A65H Hornet
- A65F Firebird Scrambler
- A65 Star Twin
- A70L Lightning 750
- A7
- Triples (four stroke, pushrod, three-cylinder engines) - The BSA Rocket 3/Triumph TridentBSA Rocket 3/Triumph TridentThe BSA Rocket Three / Triumph Trident was the first true modern superbike and the last major motorcycle developed by Triumph Engineering at Meriden. It was badge-engineered to be sold under both the Triumph and BSA marques. The Rocket3 / Trident was part of Triumph's plan to extend the model...
were developed together. The Rocket 3 shares a majority of engine components and cycle parts with the Trident T150, but has forward-inclined cylinder barrels, BSA frame and cycle parts.- A75R Rocket3 750
- A75RV Rocket3 750 - 5 speed
- A75V Rocket3 750 - 5 speed
- Singles (Four-stroke single cylinder)
- C25 Barracuda
- B25 Starfire - 250cc unit construction
- B25FS FleetstarBSA FleetstarThe BSA Fleetstar was a motorcycle designed and built in the 1960s and 1970s by the Birmingham Small Arms company in Birmingham, England....
- B25 SS Gold Star
- BSA B31BSA B31The BSA B31 is a motorcycle that was produced by Birmingham Small Arms Company.The BSA B31, introduced in 1945, was the first new model introduced by the company after the Second World War. Based on pre-war designs, it used a single cylinder four stroke engine that displaced . Initially, it had a...
single - B32 Gold Star
- B33
- B34 Gold Star
- B40 350 Star - 350cc unit construction
- B40 SS90
- B44 Victor
- B44
- B44SS Shooting StarBSA B44 Shooting StarThe BSA B44 Shooting Star was a motorcycle made by BSA at their factory in Small Heath, Birmingham. Similar to the BSA C15 and sharing many of the same parts, the B44 had an uprated chassis....
- B44VS Victor SpecialBSA B44 Shooting StarThe BSA B44 Shooting Star was a motorcycle made by BSA at their factory in Small Heath, Birmingham. Similar to the BSA C15 and sharing many of the same parts, the B44 had an uprated chassis....
- B44SS Shooting Star
- B50
- B50SS Gold Star 500
- B50T Victor Trials
- B50MX Motocross
- C series (Four-stroke single-cylinder unit constructionUnit constructionUnit construction is a term used to describe the design of larger motorcycles where the engine and gearbox components share a single casing. The term is sometimes applied to the design of automobile engines and was often loosely applied to motorcycles with rather different internal layouts such as...
).
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- C10
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- C11/C11G: 12 hp - 70 mi/h - 85mpg - weight 250 lb (113 kg).
The C11 used a C10 motor fitted with an overhead valve
Overhead valve
An overhead valve engine, also informally called pushrod engine or I-head engine, is a type of piston engine that places the camshaft within the cylinder block , and uses pushrods or rods to actuate rocker arms above the cylinder...
cylinder head. The C11 frame was almost unchanged until 1951 when BSA added plunger rear suspension. Early gearboxes
Transmission (mechanics)
A machine consists of a power source and a power transmission system, which provides controlled application of the power. Merriam-Webster defines transmission as: an assembly of parts including the speed-changing gears and the propeller shaft by which the power is transmitted from an engine to a...
were weak and unreliable. The C11G was available with a three ratio gearbox and rigid frame or a four ratio gearbox and a plunger frame. Both models had better front brakes than earlier models. This model was a common commuter motorcycle, and many survive today.
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- C12BSA C12The BSA C12 was a British motorcycle produced by the Birmingham Small Arms Company.The C12 used the same engine as the earlier C11G but in a more modern chassis. It had reasonable suspension, usable brakes and comfortable seat which meant it was more useful than the earlier models...
- C12
- (1956–1958). 249 cc OHV
Used the C11G engine, fitted with an alternator and swinging fork (known as swinging arm) rear suspension.
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- C15 StarBSA C15The BSA C15 was the first four-stroke unit construction motorcycle produced by the British company BSA and manufactured between 1958 and 1967. At the time, the C15 was the largest capacity bike that a learner could ride on L-plates in the United Kingdom...
- 250cc unit construction - C15T Trials
- C15S Scrambler
- C15SS80 Sports Star 80
- C15 Sportsman
- C15 Star
- D series (Two-stroke single cylinder. See BSA BantamBSA BantamThe BSA Bantam is a two-stroke unit construction motorcycle that was produced by the Birmingham Small Arms Company from 1948 until 1971...
for details)- D1 Bantam - 125cc unit-construction
- D3 Bantam Major
- D5 Bantam Super
- D7 Bantam Super
- D10 Silver Bantam, Bantam Supreme, Bantam Sports, Bushman
- D13
- D14/4 Bantam Supreme, Bantam Sports, Bushman - 175cc
- B175 Bantam Sports, Bushman
- Others (may include some export versions of models listed above)
- B31 Twin (350 cc). B31 frame fitted with a Triumph 3T motor to produce this BSA B31 Twin. Very few units were produced, probably prototypes.
- BSA Barracuda
- BSA Beagle
- BSA Boxer - 1979 - c.1981 the sports version of the boxer-GT50, beaver, brigand (or 50cc) range
- BSA GT50 (renamed from the boxer)
- BSA beaver the standard road version
- BSA Tracker 125/175 - late 70s moto-cross style product by NVT with Yamaha two stroke engine.
- BSA Dandy 70
- BSA Sunbeam (Scooters, also produced as Triumph TS1, TW2 Tigress)
- 175B1
- 250B2
- BSA Starfire
- BSA Rocket Scrambler
- BSA Rocket Gold Star
- BSA FuryBSA FuryThe BSA Fury was a British motorcycle manufactured as a prototype by Birmingham Small Arms Company in 1970 but by November 1972 BSA Group debts exceeded £20 million...
- BSA Hornet
- Winged Wheel (auxiliary power unit for bicycles)
- T65 Thunderbolt (essentially a Triumph TR6P with BSA Badges)
Cars
- 1907 to 1914 various forms with capacities ranging from 2.5 to 4.2 litre. The larger cars were based on the 1907 Peking-Paris Itala.
- 1910 BSA purchased with BSA shares the DaimlerDaimler Motor CompanyThe Daimler Motor Company Limited was an independent British motor vehicle manufacturer founded in London by H J Lawson in 1896, which set up its manufacturing base in Coventry. The right to the use of the name Daimler had been purchased simultaneously from Gottlieb Daimler and Daimler Motoren...
Company which took over car manufacture. - 1911 BSA car with Daimler engine.
- 1912 Car production transferred to CoventryCoventryCoventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
, BSA cars became rebadged Daimlers. - 1914 War stopped car production
- 1921 BSA car production resumed with rear-wheel-drive air-cooled V-twin light car.
- 1929 First BSA three-wheeler
- 1931 TW-5 van version of the three-wheeler
- 1931 BSA acquired LanchesterLanchester Motor CompanyThe Lanchester Motor Company Limited was a car manufacturer based until 1930 at Armourer Mills, Montgomery Street, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, England. It operated from 1895 to 1955....
. - 1932 T-9 open four seat four-wheeler with a water-cooled four cylinder 9 hp (6.7 kW) engine (1075 cc).
- 1932 V-9 Van version also produced.
- 1932 Another BSA Rear-wheel-drive fluid flywheel 10 hp (7.5 kW) car, sold alongside the T9.
- 1932 FW32 Four wheeled version of the 3-wheeler produced for 1 year
- 1933 T-9 and V-9 production ceased
- 1933 Four-cylinder engine version of the three and four-wheeled car was added to the range.
- 1935 First Scout Series 2/3
- 1936 to 1937 Scout Series 4
- 1936 Three wheeled cars dropped
- 1937 to 1938 Scout Series 5
- 1938 to 1939 Scout Series 6
- 1940 World War II stopped production of BSA cars
- 1958 to 1960 Ladybird 3-wheeler prototype
- 1960 Jaguar Cars Ltd. acquired The Daimler Co. Ltd. and its subsidiaries from the BSA group.
Military vehicles
- BSA Scout armoured car.
- "Type G Apparatus", Folding paratrooper bicycle, 32½ lb (15 kg) with parachute.
Military firearms
- Snider-EnfieldSnider-EnfieldThe British .577 Snider-Enfield was a type of breech loading rifle. The firearm action was invented by the American Jacob Snider, and the Snider-Enfield was one of the most widely used of the Snider varieties. It was adopted by British Army as a conversion system for its ubiquitous Pattern 1853...
rifle - Martini-HenryMartini-HenryThe Martini-Henry was a breech-loading single-shot lever-actuated rifle adopted by the British, combining an action worked on by Friedrich von Martini , with the rifled barrel designed by Scotsman Alexander Henry...
rifle - Lee-MetfordLee-MetfordThe Lee-Metford rifle was a bolt action British army service rifle, combining James Paris Lee's rear-locking bolt system and ten-round magazine with a seven groove rifled barrel designed by William Ellis Metford...
rifle - Lewis gunLewis GunThe Lewis Gun is a World War I–era light machine gun of American design that was perfected and widely used by the British Empire. It was first used in combat in World War I, and continued in service with a number of armed forces through to the end of the Korean War...
- Lee-EnfieldLee-EnfieldThe Lee-Enfield bolt-action, magazine-fed, repeating rifle was the main firearm used by the military forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth during the first half of the 20th century...
rifle - .303 RAF BrowningM1919 Browning machine gunThe M1919 Browning is a .30 caliber medium machine gun that was widely used during the 20th century. It was used as a light infantry, coaxial, mounted, aircraft, and anti-aircraft machine gun by the U.S. and many other countries, especially during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War...
- Hispano-Suiza cannonHispano-Suiza HS.404The Hispano-Suiza HS.404 was an autocannon widely used as both an aircraft and land weapon in the 20th century by British, American, French, and numerous other military services. The cannon is also referred to as Birkigt type 404, after its designer. Firing a 20 mm caliber projectile, it delivered...
- Oerlikon 20mm cannon
- StenStenThe STEN was a family of British 9 mm submachine guns used extensively by British and Commonwealth forces throughout World War II and the Korean War...
submachine gun - Boys anti-tank rifle
- Besa machine gunBesa machine gunThe Besa Machine Gun was a British version of the Czechoslovak ZB-53 air-cooled, belt-fed machine-gun, which in the Czechoslovak army was marked as the TK vz. 37...
- BSA experimental model 1949BSA experimental model 1949The BSA experimental model 1949 was a submachine gun of British origin intended to replace the Sten gun. The weapon was fed from a 34 side inserted box magazine and had an unusual pump-action bakelite covered handguard....
pump-action machine carbine - ADEN cannonADEN cannonThe Royal Small Arms Factory ADEN is a 30 mm revolver cannon used on many military aircraft, particularly those of the British Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm...
- L1A1 SLR
Civilian firearms
- The 1906 war office pattern rifle
- The Sportsman series of .22 Long Rifle.22 Long RifleThe .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridge is a long established variety of ammunition, and in terms of units sold is still by far the most common in the world today. The cartridge is often referred to simply as .22 LR and various rifles, pistols, revolvers, and even some smoothbore shotguns have...
bolt action rifles - Various Martini action target .22lr rifles
- The Ralock and Armatic semi automatic .22lr rifles
- Various bolt action hunting rifles mostly in .243 and .270 calibre
See also
- List of modern armament manufacturers
- TribsaTribsaThe Tribsa, or Tri-B.S.A., was a custom built cafe racer or off road motorcycle of the 1960s and 1970s. Its name was an elision of "Triumph" and "BSA". The purpose was to combine the best elements of each marque to give a superior bike to either....
cafe racer using a Triumph engine in a BSA frame - CCM (Clews Competition Motorcycles)Clews Competition MotorcyclesClews Competition Motorcycles or CCM for short, is a British motorcycle manufacturer based in Bolton, England.-History:CCM was born out of the collapse of BSA's Competition Department in 1971....
- the remnants of BSA's off road arm - List of BSA motorcycles