Monday, January 28, 2008

Harley-Davidson Motorcycle, World War II

Back in the early 1940s, the US Army asked Harley-Davidson to design a next-generation military motorcycle although the company was already producing the WLA, based on its traditional 45-degree V-twin engine. The army ordered a test batch of 1,000 XAs from Harley-Davidson. At the same time, the military also asked Indian to make a 750cc shaft-drive twin, and it came up with a 90-degree V-twin design.

The idea was to put both new machines through their paces, and award a lucrative military contract to the winner.

Eventually, the army finished its testing, and decided that neither new bike would be built. Instead, they bought several thousand more Harley WLAs. In the end, the military decided to hitch its hopes to a vehicle that could go through anything, didn’t tip over, and required very little training to operate — the Jeep.

Blame the Jeep. That’s why military motorcycles of any kind fell out of favour during World War II.

GI Joe US Army WLA 45 Harley-Davidson Military Motorcycle by HASBRO 1998




at

7 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 28, 2008 at 4:31 PM

    Nice collections man. We have the same hobby but mine is still little :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. alex teoJanuary 28, 2008 at 9:23 PM

    Hi "Baseguardian" thanks for looking and thanks for the compliments. We all got to start somewhere and I also started out small. The hobby grows with time :)
    Enjoy collecting and grow the passion - ha!ha!

    ReplyDelete
  3. ShaunJanuary 29, 2008 at 4:35 PM

    alex, looking forward to you featuring more bikes in your subsequent posts. I'm so tempted everytime to just go over to Tai Sing toys and buy their New Ray bikes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. alex teoJanuary 29, 2008 at 8:26 PM

    i like your vespa too but ran out of space already ha!ha! don't have that many bikes to feature but will post all of them on blog soon.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ShaunJanuary 29, 2008 at 9:42 PM

    eh Alex if you really want to get a Vespa, please get the one with a side car ok? That one rocks!

    ReplyDelete
  6. alex teoJanuary 30, 2008 at 12:16 AM

    thanks shaun, will keep that in mind if i ever feel like a vespa ;>

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJuly 25, 2015 at 11:33 AM

    I have this exact model still unopened. I got it for Christmas about 15 years ago

    ReplyDelete