Dutch army back on the bicycle ! 4kW, 100km range, 70kmh ATB

cool bike though:

http://www.trefectamobility.com/#power

Discussions...

Very pricy...

Looks like a beast though!

That looks mean

Hey, doesn't that "T" look familiar?

Very Mean looking!

yes!
those make beautiful panzer speed bumps.

"... panzer speed bumps."

Hehe... Can't find anywhere size of batt in kWh?

If you know your 1940 Panzers, about half of them WOULD be stopped if they tried to run over that bike. The only good tanks they had came from the Czechs. Meanwhile the Finns stopped Russians tanks using skis, the Italians made some good use of bicycles fighting the later Panzers, I'd say there's great potential for bicycle units. Japan conquered half of Asia on bike.

Dauntless said:

Japan conquered half of Asia on bike.

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Now there is some history we weren't taught in school!

Architectonic said:

Now there is some history we weren't taught in school!

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Maybe you'd be interested in a little book called 'Lies my Teacher told me.' I remember I found the 5th grade history book so confusing I ran to the library to read about the American Revolution, leading to my reading about the War of 1812 and arguing with the fool statement that the U.S. somehow WON that war. . . .

So both the German and Japanese advances in the early years relied on unprepared enemies who couldn't deal with the inferior forces that were attacking them. Japan would need to be moving groups of 50,000 men and the like over hundreds of miles at a time, but were far more backward than people give them credit for and just didn't have trucks, etc.

The big problem with the Japanese bikes is they were rather light and lacked durability. There was assumptions that because they left behind 100 damaged bikes they'd have 100 casualties, but the bike itself often was the casualty. The Japanese were trained on how to die without laying on their gun and ammo so it could be recovered, but the bikes often didn't have enough reuseable parts, so they'd steal what they could from the local riders and move on.

If you think the German tanks at the beginning of the war were bad, you should have seen the Japanese tanks. But even a good tank unit would finish 2nd to a battery of antitank guns, except the gunners never seemed to know that, they'd run away as the tanks were coming. Rommel's success was built on understanding he could use antiaircraft guns on enemy tanks, evening the odds when he was outnumbered. So the engineers built the Tiger tank, which was more of a liability than an advantage, although one on one it lacked a match until late in the war.

But if you understood you could ride out of the woods on a bike or skiis and pitch a molotov cocktail or a bomb under the back and disable the tank, (As the Finns did to the Russians on a regular basis) you didn't need antitank guns, to a point. After Italy switched sides, the Germans occupied Rome and had to ban the bicycles, which were very effective in bombing runs downtown.

An electric bike powerful enough to tow an antitank gun would have worked wonders in either theater of the war. Today, I don't think that's how wars will be fought. Military doing crowd control, responding in the city. There's ways these could be useful.

awesome frame. looks like they went mid drive then..

Japanese bicycles played a vital role in the defeat of the British in Malasia, even though the bicycle troops only progressed about 20 miles a day. The local commander demanded reinforcements and was told the Japanese would not be difficult to defend against.

The troops could confiscate food along the way, but...fuel for confiscated trucks was scarce.

And then with the British RUNNING, not walking, to escape, along comes 'Vinegar Joe' Stillwell. If you know the original 'McHale's Navy' TV series, Capt. Binghamton was inspired by this man. A loud yet pusillanimous little man, the General and new American Theater Commander had his jeep driven right past the retreating British without any effort to communicate or coordinate a counter attack. Or to find out what was REALLY going on and what the fight would be.

So, with his own butt solidly kicked, even though British cannon too small to take on normal sized tanks had already wiped out the tiny tinfoil units the Japanese used, he stood next to one of the transport planes rushed to evacuate as much of the forces they could. Stillwell should be thinking he was in trouble, as stupid as his own offensive effort had been. There's speculation that he just wanted to hide out a few days and hope things would cool down, maybe they'd find another scapegoat or be distracted by new problems. To the Colonel flying this plane, 2nd in command of bombers sent in hopes of bombing Japan from China before either Phillipines fell or enough of China was lost so their was no base, he said "I'll walk." And for 3 weeks the American Theater Commander was out of contact. . . .

So this Colonel Robert Scott, too late of course for the bombing mission to have a base and keeping himself busy flying transports, would shortly be put in command of the replacement to the American Volunteer Group of fighter pilots that would come to be known as 'The Flying Tigers.' This put him in a position to write such books as 'God is my Copilot' and others depicting why the U.S. was having a hard time fighting the war in Asia. Stillwell was a favorite target. I could go on about Stillwell's petulant tirades, ill advised offensives to take back the territory he'd originally fought over, his conspiring with Mao Se Tung to overthrow the Chinese government, until he was at last removed in disgrace. . . .

. . . .But I just want to make the point that THIS is why Europe and half of Asia fell. While the 3 Stooges fought over who was in charge the Keystone cops fumbled about, so the woefully inadequate invaders didn't encounter nearly the resistance they should have. The bicyclists would have been late and vulnerable if the Allies could have fought as they were capable of, had the organization been in place. In most of Europe there were also conspiracies within the invaded countries making that impossible; the Germans were shocked at the resistance they encountered in Norway and Belgium, while one French unit full of socialist activists unexpectedly stepped aside.

Some of the most effective resistance to the Japanese bicyclists was from local primitives with just a few rifles but many long knives. When a cyclist suddenly fell off his bike, others stopped without realizing a shot had been fired from a distance where they wouldn't hear it. With their backs to the trees as they looked at the downed rider, they didn't see anything, they just suddenly felt the knife. By the time any of the Japanese were shooting at the attackers and hitting their own people if they hit anything, the local skirmishers were disappearing back into the woods. Amazing how many times this worked. This was the only thing that allowed some American and British units to withdraw safely.

So the U.S. Army didn't have any medals that Congress would allow them to give out to non U.S. civilians, but that didn't stop a commander in the region for coming up with the 'CSM,' Civilian Service Medal, to pass out among the natives. For being the best defense against a bicycle offense in the Theater.

There were days they only moved 20 miles, I think there was a stretch of over 200 miles that took less than 2 days at one point. But at that time in history it is believed that indeed the bicycle was the most effective form of transportation for high speed warfare in that region. Especially for such a low tech country as Japan. This was a region that didn't have enough mules for fullscale combat of the type that units such as that of Colonel Wingate were succeeding with. The bicycle units could only hope to succeed for a little while, however.

Architectonic said:

Dauntless said:

Japan conquered half of Asia on bike.

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Now there is some history we weren't taught in school!

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And did you know that US pilots & aircraft served in the Chinese military to fly missions against the Japanese in Asia.?

Hey, geopolitics aside... Did you notice those Japanese bikes are Raleigh DL1 clones?
What a bike! Original "takes a lickin and keeps on tickin" design.

cool !

Hillhater said:

And did you know that US pilots & aircraft served in the Chinese military to fly missions against the Japanese in Asia.?

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If you mean the AVG, (Flying Tigers) even before that there was the 'International Squadron,' led by Chennault who could never admit he was in air combat over China because the U.S. government had told him he would be FORMALLY CHARGED as a mercennary if he did so. The gang got the planes ready for a mission, went out to hit the bar scene and when they came to Chennault told them that an air raid had destroyed their planes while they 'Slept.' Chennault is believed to have shot down at least 35 Japanese planes.

When the Chinese had bought 36 new Hawk 75 fighters, Chennault was asked if he would help out with some training for the pilots, who were having trouble landing the planes. He went to the airstrip where the training was supposed to occur and watched 7 of the 13 planes attempting to land destroyed in landing accidents. He asked when the other 23 would be arriving and was told they'd already been destroyed, this was why they wanted him to help with the remaining.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33134302

I love how the terms "military spec" and "military grade" get thrown around when they don't actually mean anything.

My latest ebike comply with every single one of the military specs of those countries: Andorra, Costa Rica, Grenada, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Solon Islands, Tuvalu and Vatican City.

I doubt that military would chose a single sided fork and rear. Especially as it seems that they had to change it to double sided in the middle of the shooting . As a positive side, they managed to fix the fork at the end.

Bad jokes aside, its a very interesting bike. What I really like is the chain protector. That is something we should nick off and call it our design!

$25k and no fenders/mudguards?

Great history guys...thanks for that!

granolaboy said:

I love how the terms "military spec" and "military grade" get thrown around when they don't actually mean anything.

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They do mean something; I regularly use mil spec electrical connectors and they are far superior than consumer grade connectors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Military_connector_specifications

I've owned one of the DARPA-funded civil-version of the US paratrooper folding ebike.

I would guess that the claimed specs (on the title of this post) is simply not possible, unless there is a miniture nuclear battery onboard, or somesuch.

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