Motorbike Engine-Powered Snowmobiles Go To Battle [History]

Harley, Indian or Excelsior: Which Motorbike Engine Powered the First Snowmobiles to Go to Battle?

The October 31, 1943, challenge of the British Version of Yank, the Military Weekly, features a function article, “Arctic Journey.” The title picture of the piece is a black-and-white shot of a G.I. on a “motor sled” on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Second Lieutenant Randolph Put up Eddy and 11 different males, two extra officers, seven enlisted males, and one civilian canine sled musher have been to be posted on what Yank workers correspondent Sgt. H. N. Oliphant known as “The ice dice tray of the world’s fridge.”

With the U.S. in pitched battles within the European and Pacific Theaters, chances are you’ll ask, “What have been G.I.s doing driving early snowmobiles on the ice of Greenland?”

It seems they have been finishing up two critically important missions for the success of the U.S. eighth Military Air Corps and the Royal Air Drive—and all different air operations over Europe, for that matter.

They reported climate circumstances at three strategic factors on the Greenland Ice Sheet to the command middle on the southern finish of Greenland through radio 4 instances a day. They reported on the place they have been sheltered and two monitoring substations, 5 miles south and 20 miles west. They needed to go to the substations for the information—no distant monitoring 80 years in the past. Scientists knew climate patterns over Greenland would assist predict the climate reaching Nazi-occupied Europe about three days later.

The opposite a part of their mission was to rescue crews of plane compelled down or crashed on the ice. That was a grim and tough process sophisticated by poor communications, frequent savage blizzard circumstances, and extremely harmful terrain that included glacial ice with deep crevasses.

Certainly, in the course of the nine-month mission, Lt. Max Demorast of Flint, Mich., the one member of the navy group with Arctic ice information, was killed when the motor sled he was working fell right into a snow-covered crevasse.

The machine proven in motion on the mission seems to be one of many motorized toboggan designs constructed by Carl Eliason’s firm in Sayner, Wisc., and the FWD (4 Wheel Drive Auto Co.) in Clintonville, Wisc., between 1940 and 1946 (Section II design, mannequin C). That mannequin would have been one of many 150 motor sleds bought by the Battle Division, as immediately’s Division of Protection was known as then. These fashions got here with the Indian 45ci V-twins that produced 25 horsepower. Eliason patented the unique design in 1927. Up till 1931, when Excelsior went out of enterprise, these engines have been additionally used on some fashions.

Regardless of being in-built Sayner and Clintonville, just a few hours’ drive from Harley-Davidson’s manufacturing unit in Milwaukee, an Excelsior twin and inline-4, and the 25-horsepower Indian V-twin have been used as an alternative of Harley-Davidson V-twins. The Indian powerplant was used as a result of it got here with a single solid unit for engine and transmission—unit building—which the corporate favored as a result of it decreased weight, saved area, and made meeting of the sleds simpler and sooner. Harley-Davidson’s design utilized a separate engine and transmission (aka non-unit).

Regardless of being frozen out of the snowmobile enterprise, Harley-Davidson retained the lion’s share of the navy motorbike enterprise. Manufacturing knowledge exhibits that from 1941 to 1945, Harley-Davidson constructed 59,718 WLAs (U.S. Military), 17,972 WLCs (Canadian Military), 1,357 WLR (Russian Military) 45ci V-twin fashions, and 1,000 XA (opposed twin boxer, shaft-drive) fashions, for a complete of 79,047 items.

Indian, in the meantime, produced solely 39,054 items over the identical interval, of which 24,928 have been below navy contract. That included about 1,000 examples of the distinctive shaft-drive transverse V-twins, designated mannequin 841. So, it’s unlikely Harley-Davidson would have missed the minuscule variety of engine/transmission packages Indian offered for snowmobile use.

Along with Eddy and Demorast, the mission included S/Sgt. Charles Howes of Stamford, Conn., S/Sgt. Arthur Corridor of Chicago, Sgt. Willis Bell of Minnesota, Sgt. Simon Karatzas of Brooklyn, Sgt. Don Tetley of Weeping Spring, Texas, Cpl. Arthur Goldstrom of Baltimore, and T/4 Joseph Linton of Fernandina, Florida.

The lads have been on responsibility in Greenland constantly from September 1942 to Might 1943. Throughout that winter, their publish was buried below 25 toes of snow. On the top of winter, leaving the hut was executed by a hatch within the constructing’s roof. Going to the latrine was completed by crawling out a window, down a 50-foot-long tunnel by means of the snow to a picket one-hole plank set over a trench. With no warmth or working water, rest room breaks tended to be very transient.

Throughout the nine-month mission, the boys’s solely contact with the remainder of the world was two baggage of mail air-dropped to the publish in November and March and one radio program as soon as every week. Since their solely supply {of electrical} energy was a gas-fueled generator, use of the radio gear to obtain something however mission-related transmissions was extraordinarily restricted.

When the mission lastly ended, the boys had doubts about whether or not their climate remark knowledge made a lot of a distinction; certainly, they questioned whether or not all of their transmissions have been acquired. It wasn’t till they have been again on the command publish that they have been knowledgeable that every one of their transmissions had been acquired, on time, and full, and had supplied very important info for the air warfare over Europe.

By 1953, Indian was out of enterprise solely. Regardless of quite a few revival efforts, Indian was not on stable floor within the motorbike enterprise till Polaris Industries took over the marque in 2011. That story is informed in Darwin Holmstrom’s e-book, Indian Motorbike 120 Years of America’s First Motorbike Firm, which we’ve got reviewed

Paradoxically, AMF-era Harley-Davidson took a crack on the snowmobile enterprise in 1970, constructing lovely 398cc and 440cc machines. Good as they have been—and collectible now—The Motor Firm slid out of the sled enterprise for good by 1975.