Historical Harley-Davidson video highlights

[panhead]

Some Youtube videos as provided by the company:


U.S. Motorcycles Corps Through Desert - 1941-1945



U.S. Army Trains Dispatch Riders




New York Hails War Heroes of United Nations - 1942



A Shaft-Driven Motorcycle

[concrete guy]

Awsome footage!! Thanks for posting!

Scott

[lockdoc]

Nice vids. I never saw the BMW copy in action before.

[FlatHeadSix]

Great video!

I would almost bet that the desert maneuvers in the first clip were filmed at Fort Hood Texas, the terrain looks very familiar.

And, if anyone has one of those baby tanks I would be willing to trade a couple WLs for one of them.

thanks PanHead, if you find any more please post them

mike

[Bosheff]

The BMW lookin units are in fact XA's....bosheff

[lockdoc]

The BMW lookin units are in fact XA's....bosheff

That's right. XA "Experimental Army". A near duplicate of the BMW R71. I always thought it kind of weird that we (US) were building such an obvious copy while fighting the source. We were the ones supposed to be copied. Right? Didn't seem to fit in with the propaganda of the time. Even though we weren't fighting Germany at the XA's inception.

[59Panman]

Here is a link I found with some more information. The desert clip could be outside Camp Elliot in San Diego?

http://www.leathernecksmc.com/motorcycl ... istory.htm

[pan50head]

There is also the movie Born To Ride. Kind of corny but a lot of great film of old Harleys. There are scenes of working in a repair garage and a lot of old frames are hanging on the walls.



You can rent on Amazon for $3.