How the Army tried and failed to build a bicycle corps (2020) | Hacker News Reader

How the Army tried and failed to build a bicycle corps (2020)

armytimes.com

74 points1970-01-0164 comments

Here in Finland we don’t have bicycle corps but pretty much everyone is thought to ride a bike in the army and does a bicycle march or two with gear etc.

Idea isn’t to use bikes for battle or anything like that. Instead they are meant for increased mobility if/when fuel starts to run low during a conflict.

Most are also thought to ski partly for the same reason but skiing is also pretty much the only way to move in deep snow efficiently without machines (walking/running is way too slow/hard when you sink into the snow)

Despite the US Army abandoning the idea, the British Cyclist Corp was active for much longer and saw service in WWI

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Cyclist_Corps

With limited automotive access, reasonable infrastructure, and a lot of coastline to cover / patrol a bicycle corp seems ya great idea.

The Germans succeeded in some bicycle use early in WWII. The invasions of Poland and France startled the world with their speed. How could they move so many hundreds of thousands of men so far in such a short time? Even the Germans didn't have sufficient autos to move so many men that quickly.

Bicycles filled an important gap in the transportation infrastructure, and they employed an approach where groups of soldiers would move many miles per day by rotating between trucks, bicycles, and walking on foot. Sleeping was not part of a soldier's schedule in these blitz invasions, and he'd presumably get some shut eye on the back of a truck or in a field during a very brief pause. This was also made successful by excellent planning, and maybe drugs.

Also, I heard that German soldiers appropriated a bunch of bicycles during their occupation of the Netherlands.

“Maybe drugs” ha

The German military handed out methamphetamines like candy.

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/blitzed-norman-ohler?...

I was going to say "they put methamphetamines in the candy", but apparently that's a myth (https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2022/11/melting-the-myth-of-panze...)

There was cocaine chocolate though. It existed before the war as a sort of sports suppliment.

I'm basing this on a youtube video I once watched by an MRE review channel, where he kept referring to the additive as "Kola".

> German soldiers appropriated a bunch of bicycles during their occupation of the Netherlands

That “a bunch” is really in the “six zeros” range. There’s an episode of 99% invisible that tells the story of bikes in the Netherlands and mentions this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/de-fiets-is-niets/

There's a reason shouting "m'n fiets terug"[0] at Germans has only somewhat recently stopped happening as much.

[0] translates roughly to "Give me my bicycle back"

> Even the Germans didn't have sufficient autos to move so many men that quickly

Not that surprising since the French and especially the British armies were motorized to a much higher degree than the German army (generally German infantry divisions still heavily relied on horses).

The French had at least 3 times as many trucks as the Germans (400 000 vs 120 000). Without the equipment looted from Czechoslovakia France would've had more tanks as well. The Germans had a significant advantage in the air (more/better anti-air and fighters).

"Look at you! You have horses. What were you thinking?"

https://youtu.be/LyZK8k4gzyg

There's a great scene at the end of the Band of Brothers miniseries where the victorious American soldiers drive their trucks past a column of surrendered Germans with horse drawn wagons. We're fortunate that the Nazis never quite got the hang of industrial scale assembly line mass production.

The primary reason Germany was so reliant on horses for logistics isn't that they weren't able to build cars, but that they didn't have enough fuel. Germany was blockaded by sea and none of the land they had captured had significant oil reserves. Romania had some, but not enough to feed their tanks and airplanes. A lot of German fuel came from coal liquefaction. About 90% of Germany's aircraft fuel and about 50% of the diesel fuel came from coal liquefaction. Contrary to what Factorio would have you believe, coal liquefaction is an expensive process- so expensive that producing enough fuel to convert your logistics supply chain from trains and horses to trucks just wasn't in the cards for Nazi Germany.

Through the lens of "Germany doesn't have enough fuel" a lot of Hitler's decision making makes a lot more sense. Lots of people talk about what would have happened if Hitler had tried to take Moscow instead of deciding to drive south towards Baku. The speculation goes that if Hitler had taken Moscow, they could have won. Well, no they couldn't: they didn't have enough oil to win the war. Baku is where all the oil is, so if Germany had been able to take Baku, it's possible that they'd be able to win. Well, they weren't able to take Baku, so they lost the war. It also explains North Africa; if the Axis were able to take Egypt, it would have been relatively easy to continue the drive on to the oil fields in the Middle East. (closing the Suez Canal would have effectively cut off the British colonies there)

Yes. Germany actually had to demechanise the infantry during the war due to the lack of fuel.

Then you've got the supply problems on the eastern front. From what I understand the Stalingrad airlift failed not because they couldn't carry enough stuff on the planes, but because they couldn't get the stuff from the rail heads to the air strips.

It's very under appreciated just how much oil impacted the war.

> weren't able to build cars

I'm not sure they really had enough to industrial capacity, it's not like they were able to manufacture that many tanks either.

But yeah it doesn't matter because they wouldn't have had enough oil anyway as you say.

> Lots of people talk about what would have happened if Hitler had tried to take Moscow instead of deciding to drive south towards Baku

Had the USSR not supplied Germany with massive amounts of oil and other raw materials during 1939 and '40 (which they did for some bizarrely deranged reasons), that likely wouldn't have been a problem in the first place. After Poland, Germany only had enough fuel to last a few months, so it would've been very hard for them to successfully invade Norway and France without Stalin bankrolling them..

"Bad Teeth No Bar" gave me a chuckle

Various countries:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_infantry

Japan's WW2 Malaya-Singapore strategy used bicycles.

Also it's fun that HOI4 has bicycle infantry

https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/fb3p6l/what_nations_c...

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/whats-the-point...

Weird, you'd think they'd technically be called bicycle dragoons?

I'm not sure but I think the proper name is bicycle infantry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_infantry

The suggestion is because what would analogously be “horse infantry” are historically called “dragoons” rather than “horse infantry”.

> Much of the time the roads were so bad that the Corps had to dismount and push their wheels along railroad tracks.

Among other issues, the condition of the roads made bicycling untenable. Even with fat tires, this seems like a big obstacle. This is why tracked vehicles were invented. If they could guarantee relatively flat roads with good drainage going all the way to the front, this seems like something that could work, but if you could do that then I guess you'd probably just take them in a bus.

I think bikes are fundamentally more geared toward guerilla and resistance. They allow small and lightly armed units to move fast through narrow/low accessibility paths, strike and flee/hide back. Rince and repeat.

I don't think that would be the case, but I see what you mean.

but that's just what op was saying no? bicycles are not well suited to narrow/low accessibility paths. You can generally only use them on prepared pathways that will be on both your and your enemy's maps.

Op's assumption is you have bad terrain but still relatively flat and with good lateral clearance. I'd assume rocky desert or swampy plains for instance. That sure wouldn't be ideal for bycicles.

But tracked vehicles (or any vehicle, short of bikes ?) wouldn't work in forest like ecosystems or mountain paths for instance. In comparison bycicles are fine whereever you have enough clearance for a single man to walk comfortably.

"Still, it’s certainly fun to imagine how a bicycle battalion might have evolved to fight in a jungle or urban combat situation."

The VC in Vietnam made good use of pushing bicycles to carry heavy loads in jungle terrain.

The Japanese defeated the Dutch on Indonesia by using bicycles. It was the most ironic of defeats.

Colonialism never recovered from that blow.

Uhh what, the Japanese were trying to incorporate the DEA into THEIR empire.

> Colonialism never recovered from that blow

There are still plenty of colonies and things that look a lot like colonies (but aren’t as their rulers are against empires).

Sweden had bicycle-mounted infantry into the 1980:s (towards the end, mostly local defence units). However, the soldiers were not supposed to pedal for any significant distance (and certainly not to fight mounted!). They would be towed by tractors, and leave their steel steeds to fight on foot. I think the concept was introduced during the first half of the 20th century because it allowed increased mobility at a much lower cost than having everyone in a motor vehicle. It has also been noted that, in case of suddenly appearing aerial threats, a bicycle unit could melt away into the forest with remarkable effectiveness.

I did my conscript service in 2005 in Sweden.

We still occasionally used the bicycles to move around at the platoon level. It’s a very effective way of moving short distances.

E-bike corps? Seems like a new opportunity as batteries achieve new levels.

Transportation on the front is important and we should continue to experiment as technology evolves.

Both the Ukrainians and the Russians have used some form of such electric devices for their mobility, such as in this video [1], the problem is that when you're close to an active front-line the power tends to be off permanently, so you'd have to rely on generators in order to recharge those things. Not ideal, it's energy lost.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/14n0oa...

On the other hand you can charge e-devices with solar panels. Slowly, but it's doable.

And generators tend to be more efficient than regular engines, because they will always run at the optimal rpm. Combine that with a 90%+ efficient electric engine and you'll get more distance from a jerry can of gasoline/diesel than you would with an ICE.

Trying to manage solar panels in a war zone would be a nightmare. It paints a big target on the map. Actually a target precisely the size of the gathered troops. I don’t recommend it.

It's not like you need a square mile of panels to trickle-charge an e-bike or a light ev motorbike.

Generators and warm engines paint even bigger targets, as do troops whose body temperature is above ambient.

A 4 sqm solar panel and a bike next to it hidden under foliage isn't exactly a priority target.

A motorcycle could do anything an ebike could do, but faster and with more gear.

And with better energy density. The only negative is the noise. Easy to spot these high revs from a long distance.

This story fleshes out some of the details of the ride - 2017 article [0]

[0] https://www.historynet.com/us-armys-25th-infantry-bicycle-co...

Tangential, but the US Marines have in their fleet multi-fuel Kawasaki KLR650 motorcycles and I've always 1) wanted one and 2) wondered what they've been used for:

https://www.rideapart.com/features/360407/cycleweird-diesel-...

They come up for auction sometimes but are rare and generally in hot demand:

https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=90&ac...

I, too, desperately want one. The price on that one wasn't even as high as I thought it would be, until I saw it had no title and no battery and hadn't run for a while. Any reputable multi-fuel motorcycle would be great...

My dream is a bike with a rotary 2 stroke turbodiesel. It makes more sense than it sounds, I promise...

iirc most of the times ive heard about motorbikes used millitarily is for courier service in case of communication failure. Iirc there was a quite effective wargame in the early 200s run by the us millitary in whihc a simulated iran did very well using such a strategy

That is fascinating, thanks for sharing! After some web search I believe the second part of your comment refers to "Millennium Challenge 2002":

> Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.

[1]: https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

> Despite the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps proving that the pennyfarthing could move troops twice as fast as horses in 1897, it was only be a few short years before the automobile would disrupt the way battles were fought on all fronts, forever changing the face of warfare.

Not directly applicable here; but there's a very real sense in which the push for marginal improvements are not worth it when the ground is moving beneath your feet. Investing major resources in improving the implementation of Plan A might really detract from a broader push for a substantially better Plan B.

US Army also abandoned the Camel Corps [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Camel_Corps

That bonus damage against Knight-line units isn't to be trifled with though

Fully upgraded Paladins still cut through heavy camels ;)

Somehow appropriate. A wild fact: Camels evolved in North America and spread to other areas before going extinct in NA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel#Evolution

Switzerland had bicycle regiments until 2003: https://www.campfirecycling.com/blog/2017/02/27/the-swiss-ar...

From my time in service, I remember how much of a pain it was to ride these bikes, although they are literally indestructible. You can still see them all around the country in private use because they just don't break.

The trial trek was re-enacted recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4xaVpFRVi0.

Bicycles seem like tools for militaries that need to trade off utility for price. Underdogs, under-resourced, militaries doing asymmetric warfare, perhaps. The US military doesn't like doing that, they'll always take the cool, expensive option if they can.

Can the US military use commercial quadrotors, or are they forced to go through the same procurement process that adds a dozen bells and whistles with a couple zeros on the price?

In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway writes of German scouts on bicycles at the head of the Caporetto breakthrough.

In italy we have a corps, the "bersaglieri", that have as main trait running and the use of the bicycle. Here some info:

https://ditsong.org.za/en/2019/12/24/the-bersaglieri-and-the...

https://youtu.be/-N9NiEH9-vg

Father Noko was in Finnish Calvary in 1930s. In 1942 the horses were deposed and replaced with bicycles. However everything else remained the same, they still had red pants, spurs and swords, --clerical error in headquarters, perhaps.

Sables were very particular, inherited from Russian Hussars, but almost impossible to transport on a bicycle. So they were lost in alarming rate and never replaced.

So bicycles were never used in Hussar-style cavalry attack with swords ablazing. This was the only thing Vilho Noko ever missed and regretted from WWII.

I don't get why the article is so negative about the idea.

Mounted infantry were a thing (rode horses, but dismounted to fight)

Most 'war' certainly at that time was marching around. So why not do it more efficiently. Yes sure today we have APCS, trucks etc. But even today there's a need for the infantry to march, so I wouldn't say there's no role for an ebike or something, although, today that role is very niche.

Try again with ebikes. Save energy, super quiet, faster, carry heavier weapons gotta like all that for a sneak attack.

They’re also like 60 lbs unfortunately. I think with advancements in biking tech this is achievable now.

This is happening in Ukraine with motocross-style ebikes carrying 2-man teams with Javelin missiles.

this there are some pretty insane videos out there a out this, an extremely light weight unit capable of taking down tanks..

Yeah this is what a lot of people thought the Ukraine war would look like: Russia doing a successful invasion of most of the unwilling country which fights back in a guerilla warfare style. But Ukraine did better than expected and now it looks more like WW1 but with less gas and more drones. They do also apply guerilla tactics though.

In any case, the USA lost to the motorbike guerillas in Afghanistan, which is probably where the Ukrainians got the idea from.

This was tried, w/ a 4-star general for marketing purposes:

https://www.electricbike.com/tidal-force/

(really regret not picking one up off eBay)

and other folks are trying again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilentHawk

https://leedsbikes.com/electric-bike-reports/darpa-electric-...

The US also had a Balloon corps at one point

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Army_Balloon_Corps

Reply on news.ycombinator.com