Greetings

As the proud new owner of a 1943 m20, I would like to find out where, if at all, the bike served in WWII, or perhaps elsewhere. I spotted some discussion regarding the Australian record books available to some lucky owners here, maybe some one can do me a small favor and see if my bike is listed there, frame number M20.91794, engine number 97201. Thanks in advance, regards

Dave Wadiak
San Jose
California, USA

email (option): dwdiak4@gmail.com

Hi Dave,

Welcome to the forum. Its just about impossible to find out where your BSA has been used during the war. All I can tell you is that it saw military use after the war in Germany at BAOR, British Army On the Rhine. Many BSA's used there ended up in the USA.

The war time tank number of your BSA was C5125194 while the post war military registration number was 11YE26. This information comes from the military keycard 586A.
Lex Schmidt owns there cards and if you are interested a copy of that card is available from him.

I can send you some war time photos of BSA's with tank numbers close to your BSA's tank number if you want, this gives an idea what it looked like during the war.

Henk.

email (option): ahum@quicknet.nl

"in Germany at BAOR, British Army On the Rhine. Many BSA's used there ended up in the USA"

Henk, why was this? Sold for export or American troops buying them and bringing them home?

My bike (in The USA) was a BAOR bike.

email (option): paulscutler@gmail.com

I wouldn't really know how these BAOR bikes ended up in the USA but many did.

Hopefully other forum members know more about this.

Henk

email (option): ahum@quicknet.nl

If these are the same bikes that I think have been mentioned previously then a dealer bought up some bikes and sent them as a batch to the States. Which dealer or when I don't know/recall.

The British Army had large reserve vehicle stocks during the Cold War and the M20s were disposed off locally during the early / mid 1960s. There was a large Reserve Vehicle Depot at Antwerp which was where supplies for BAOR entered Europe. They were presumably kept in a bonded warehouse to avoid paying Belgian duties. Most of the U.S. M20s have Belgian customs seals suggesting that they came from there.

It would seem that at least one U.S. dealer bought several container-loads of WM20s and G3L Matchlesses...Oddly the Matchlesses seem to have disappeared - maybe they were still modern enough to have been worn out.

John Edwards posted some adverts from 1963/64 from Ansel's Trading Post. There may have been others.

http://pub37.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=3155626639&frmid=16&msgid=1275597&cmd=show

By '63 / '64; the Nortons, Ariels and Enfields had all been sold off which explains the lack of higher-class WD motorcycles in the States

I re imported one of these BSA M20, still with post war number on , rebuilt with a new engine , no engine number stamped, and new gearbox, came with the Antwerp customs tag still attached, it went into a museum in Florida for many years, and I bought it six years ago and brought it back to the Uk its been to Normandy once, but I keep it in the same condition OILY RAG as it arrived to me, andrew

email (option): warbikes@gmail.com