Skip to main content

Japan’s secret WWII weapon you played with as a kid

Japan’s secret WWII weapon you played with as a kid

Advancing Japanese troops ride bicycles in Malaysia in 1941.

Believe it or not, you've almost certainly played with a secret weapon before. Well, not literally a weapon, but Japan's secret ace-in-the-hole for their invasion of Malaysia in 1941. In preparation for challenging logistics while fighting in jungles on islands, Japan ordered 6,000 bicycles for each of its attacking divisions, changing military history.

Shockingly, they made a huge difference and would probably still be useful today.

Bicycles' history in combat

the use of bicycles in war has a long history, but it is rarely used in actual combat. The modern bicycle, with two even wheels and a chain connecting the pedals to the back wheel, was first invented in 1885, and militaries began experimenting with it and earlier designs the same year.

Europe quickly embraced the bicycle for message couriers, some reconnaissance, and, in rare cases, moving infantry troops. By World War I, bicycles were a common feature of warfare. Combatants even experimented with welding bicycles together to create ambulances, mobile machine gun platforms, and more. But as the fight settled into trench warfare and the armies industrialized, bicycles got smaller and smaller roles further from the frontlines.

In World War II, bicycles were, again, mostly for use behind the lines. Except with Japanese troops in amphibious campaigns.


(Original Caption) Peking, China: Chinese Nationalist troops leaving Peking for Tsinanfu, capital of Shantung Province, which they will take over from Japanese troops who have held it for almost a year. Undated photograph. (Photo by George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)

Japanese invasion of Malaya

The Japanese at Malaya were the baddies, but they gave themselves a real challenge. Malaya was occupied by the British, and their engineers quickly destroyed bridges and used the terrain to limit Japanese troop movements. While Japan had air and naval supremacy, Britain had knowledge of the terrain, an artillery advantage, and started fully deployed.

Japan had to maneuver across the peninsula to win, even as bridge after bridge blew from British explosives. The British counter-mobility campaign slowed Japanese armor, but it did little against the bicycle troops that Japan still fielded in every infantry division on the campaign.

Each attacking Japanese division had 6,000 bicycles, allowing this highly mobile force to exploit openings quickly, move troops between fights, and carry more weight. The use of bicycles drastically cut down on the need for fuel. And Japanese soldiers learned to ride on their rims, allowing them to keep going even without rubber for tires.

British failures

The British attempted to defend the roads since the roads were how they moved around the island. But Japanese troops got two advantages from this.

First, British troops sometimes heard the rattling of rims on the road and assumed tanks were inbound, forcing lightly armed Brits to flee. And Japanese troops could ride through the jungle, quickly getting behind entrenched British units focused on roads.

Japan quickly made it to the capital of Singapore with its forces largely intact, well-supplied, and ready to fight. Britain, with its forces still arrayed across the island and with tens of thousands missing or captured, gave up the capital within weeks.

It would be easy to overstate the impact of Japanese bicycles on the fight. The naval superiority of Japan was, obviously, a big deal in a peninsula campaign. And Japanese air superiority allowed it to break up British troop concentrations. But the ability to rapidly move troops in good order with large numbers of supplies tipped the scales toward Japan, and it was thanks to the humble bicycle.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The stràngest marriage in the world was in the 80s, the Swiss Corina Hoffman, on a visit to Kenya 🇰🇪

The stràngest marriage in the world was in the 80s, the Swiss Corina Hoffman, on a visit to Kenya  🇰🇪  In 1986, Hofmann and her boyfriend Marco made a trip to Kenya. There, she met a Samburu warrior named Lketinga Leparmorijo and instantly found him irresistible.  She left Marco, went back to Switzerland to sell her possessions, and, in 1987, returned to Kenya, determined to find Lketinga, which she eventually did. The couple moved in together, married, and had a daughter.  Hofmann moved into her mother-in-law's manyatta (compound) and learned to live as a Samburu woman, fetching wood and water. She opened a small shop in the village, to sell basic goods. Hofmann suffered several hardships, including diseases (mainly malaria) and marital problems. Increasingly paranoid jealousy from her husband, possibly a side effect of his addiction to the d.rug khat (miraa), severely damaged her relationship, and in 1990 she decided to return to Switzerland for good, t...

THE LITTLE JEWISH GIRL WHO SURVIVE THE HOLOCAUST IN 1933

The Jewish girl who Survival the holocaust  Anny-Yolande Horowitz was a Jewish girl born on June 2, 1933 in Strasbourg, France. She and her family were interned in the Lalande camp near Tours and then transferred to Drancy before being deported on September 11, 1942 on Convoy 31 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Unfortunately, Anny, her mother Frieda and her sister Paulette did not survive the Holocaust.   holocaust survival This photo is from "French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial" by Serge Klarsfeld. It's a huge doorstop of a book containing whatever photos and information that remain of the 11,000 French-Jewish children who were murdered by Nazis like Klaus Barbie (who Klarsfeld helped put on trial). The number of beautiful, innocent faces in this book is overwhelming. The book cost me $85 but I didn't care - I needed to remember those faces." All that is known of Anny is what is on her identification card, that she was Jewish, had blonde hair, blue eyes, ...

WHO IS THE WORST PERSON TO EVER LIVE ON THIS PLANET?

I vote for Danny Immens. I’ll describe his story, and let you decide. The boy on the left was one of his victims. Thursday, June 24, 1999. For you and me, this was a Thursday like most others. But for 12-year-old Steve Vissers, it would be his very last. And it would end in agony. (If that is the word.) Together with his younger brother, he was riding his bicycle in the park when the man hit him. His mother had forbidden them to ride beyond the bridge, but the boys had decided to go just a little further — what could go wrong, right ? And then the man had hit his bike with his scooter. Nobody was hurt, but the man insisted to drive Steve to a doctor, just in case. Steve refused — twenty years later, his brother Sven would say that it was immediately obvious that something was wrong with the man — and suddenly there was a knife, the man forced Steve on his scooter, and drove away. Steve turned his head, and waved to his brother. And then they were gone. It was the very last time that Sv...

The Painful Death Of Sergeant John D. Kelly of Venango Township. And His Medal Of Honor For Action WWII.

The Painful Death Of Sergeant John D. Kelly of Venango Township. And His Medal Of Honor For Action WWII. U.S. Army Technical Sergeant John D. Kelly of Venango Township, Pennsylvania, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions on June 25, 1944, near Fort du Roule, France. Kelly joined the Army in June 1942, and by June 25th, 1944, was serving as a Corporal in Company E, 314th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division.  On that day, at Fort du Roule, Cherbourg, France, Kelly repeatedly exposed himself to hostile fire to destroy an enemy emplacement and capture its occupants. He was killed in action five months after being promoted to technical sergeant. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on this day. Kelly is buried at the Epinal American Cemetery and Memorial in Epinal, France.

GINA THE TALENTED CYCLIST RESCUE HUNDRED ITALIANS DURING WWII

 Gina Rescue mission in world war 2  While he was widely admired for his athletic achievements, few knew about cyclist and two-time Tour de France winner Gino Bartali's rescue efforts during World War II.  Germany occupied Italy, its former Axis partner, in 1943. Afterward, Gino used his fame and athleticism to smuggle messages in the handlebars and seat of his bicycle for underground rescue networks.  He couriered counterfeit paperwork to Jews in hiding, enabling them to escape deportation to Auschwitz.  Gino cycled from Florence throughout much of occupied Italy, sometimes even riding as far as Rome, proudly wearing his Italian racing jersey decorated with his name. Hi hundreds of Italian Jews, then went on to win the Tour de France in 1948, ten years after his first win. Gino did not speak about what he did during the war, sharing just a few details with his son. It was only after Gino's death in 2000 that his rescue efforts became known. In 2013, Yad Vashem ...

Why Anna Maria Von Stockhausen’s corpse, strapped to keep her coming back from the dead.

Why Anna Maria Von Stockhausen’s corpse, strapped to keep her coming back from the dead.   This is the corpse of Anna Maria von Stockhausen. After death she was strapped down to keep her in her grave. According to folklore, Stockhausen was a witch who resurrected herself 5 times. She was accused of being a witch during the Middle ages and Black Plague. This folklore about Anna was that she was killed about 6 times. She was first hanged and later clawed herself out of the grave. The town people captured her in a nearby town and quickly drowned her in a lake, by tying her to a plank. The townspeople said they checked her several times after dragging her lifeless body out of the water. View more graphics content below  View more below:

THE BLIND GIRL WHO WITHNESS ATOMIC BOMB IN 1945

The girl who got blind by atomic bomb  picture of a blind Japanese girl who lost her sight due to witnessing the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The blast killed 66,000 people. Despite the atomic bombs forcing a Japanese surrender, the USA has been heavily criticized over the years for the amount of damage they caused. They also mostly k’illed civilians, who most likely had nothing to do with the war. It was also a stance against communist aggression by the USSR in Manchuria. However, if the bombs were not dropped, an invasion of Japan would have prolonged the war, and at least 2,000,000 US troops would have d’ied, according to calculations, as well as millions of the Japanese, allied fighters, and other sources of soldiers. It is easily one of the most divisive topics of World War II if the bombs should have been dropped or not. This has been only 1 out of 2 nuclear attacks in history.

Rest In Peace To RNZAF Flight Sergeant Reg Wellington Who Passed Away On 3rd November 2022

Rest in Peace to RNZAF Flight Sergeant Reg Wellington who passed away on 3rd November 2022   Reg joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force when he turned 18 in 1943. He learned to fly on Tiger Moths and Harvards before upgrading to the P-40 and then doing a conversion course on the Corsair at Ardmore. In 1944 Reg was sent to 22 squadron and deployed to the Pacific on the 19th December. On his first tour, over Kavieng at top of New Ireland, Reg and his squadron did 2 strikes a day, bombing and strafing the Japanese from their base in Emirau. They would drop bombs on the Japanese and then strafe up the enemies vegetable gardens. While in 22 squadron, Reg’s aircraft was F4U-1 Corsair NZ5339 coded '39' and in the photos above, that is actually Reg in the cockpit of No 39. He told me that he remembered dropping that 1000lbs ‘Daisy cutter’ bomb on that day. He also told me in regards to his Corsair that he “never a put scratch on her” Reg described flying the Corsair as - “Wonderful! Pu...

The native U.S Marines sent to guard the "island of Guadalcanal in 1948"

 The native U.S Marines sent to guard the "island of Guadalcanal in 1948" Native scouts leading U.S. Marines of the 1st  had established a to hold on the island of Guadalcanal, a trio of natives appeared at the mouth of the Tenaru River.  One of the individuals spoke English, and he offered their services to the Leathernecks as scouts. A tall, muscular man, he explained he had retired from the native constabulary as a sergeant major but had fled from his home when the Japanese had invaded his beloved Solomon Islands. my Realizing his value, a group of Marines quickly whisked him to the CP to be briefed. He shook the hand of division intelligence officer Lt. Col. Edmund J. Buckley and introduced himself: “I am Sergeant Major Jacob Vouza.” Native scouts were a tremendous asset to the Marines during the Guadalcanal campaign. These select men had been recruited and trained by the British for law enforcement purposes.  Together with men like Captain Martin Clemens, a coas...