The Saddle Thread ( a rivet counter’s guide to the WD motorcycle saddles )

[SimonBrown]

12 hours ago, rewdco said:

Fantastic overview Simon! I've seen lots of Thistlegorm pictures, but non of these show the complete vessel. Thanks for sharing!

 

And thank you for sharing the movement card - not seen that before.

11 hours ago, 79x100 said:

Thanks for posting that movement card, Jan...I've not seen it before...It pretty much suggests that the India Office Nortons on board had been embarked at Aden en route to Egypt with units of the Indian Army who were transferring there from the Aden Garrison during 1941.

The Nortons are found at the aft end of hold No2 on the lower deck. They are in perhaps the least accessible area of the ship  and access is very tight. 

I suppose its possible Hold No2 could have been loaded in Aden, but the physical challenge of manhandling 27~30 motorbikes into the least accessible area of the ship is, I think, exceptionally unlikely?

Do we know if there were other vehicles loaded in Aden?

[SimonBrown]

14 hours ago, rewdco said:

Fantastic overview Simon! I've seen lots of Thistlegorm pictures, but non of these show the complete vessel. Thanks for sharing!

 

One question: Does anyone know what "S.T.A. 7" refers to?

The movement card says "Alloc[ated] to S.T.A 7 for carriage of MT & military stores to Mid. East"

So the nagging question is...what or whom is S.T.A. 7?

[Rob wd16h]

2 hours ago, SimonBrown said:

And thank you for sharing the movement card - not seen that before.

The Nortons are found at the aft end of hold No2 on the lower deck. They are in perhaps the least accessible area of the ship  and access is very tight. 

I suppose its possible Hold No2 could have been loaded in Aden, but the physical challenge of manhandling 27~30 motorbikes into the least accessible area of the ship is, I think, exceptionally unlikely?

Do we know if there were other vehicles loaded in Aden?

The MC's were in the back of trucks so they will have been loaded with the trucks as one unit. Similar like transport of MC's at the Dunkirk retreat.

[Rob wd16h]

The mystery in this all is that the WD16H Nortons in the cargo are built according to the India Office specifications as can bee seen by the upturned rear end of the silencer. Were they new machines or used machines coming from India as suggested by Rik.
We have no information other than an India Office contract number of October 1939 but it seems unlikely they were newly made in June 1941.
The way they were carried  i.e. "uncrated" on the back of lorries does not seem the "normal" way to transport new motorcycles. There was no evidence of crating in the time that Cousteau visited it I seem to remember.

None of the Websites describing the Thistlegorm do mention any possibility of an intermediate stop in Aden but it is clearly in the card shown by Jan.

I feel Rik's suggestion does have a fairly large chance of being correct. 

[SimonBrown]

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The mystery in this all is that the WD16H Nortons in the cargo are built according to the India Office specifications as can bee seen by the upturned rear end of the silencer.

That is new to me and thanks for sharing. Is there a copy of the specifications available anywhere?

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The way they were carried  i.e. "uncrated" on the back of lorries does not seem the "normal" way to transport new motorcycles. There was no evidence of crating in the time that Cousteau visited it I seem to remember

All the motorbikes - BSA and Norton - are carried assembled and there has been no evidence they were loaded in crates. Cousteau's film 10 years after the sinking records no evidence of such.

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None of the Websites describing the Thistlegorm do mention any possibility of an intermediate stop in Aden but it is clearly in the card shown by Jan.

Our book (shameless plug...apologies... SS Thistlegorm guide) does mention a stop in Aden where she joined HMS Carlisle for convoy into the Red Sea. Other than coal bunkering perhaps we had not considered extra cargo being loaded.

From the Lloyds archive we know THISTLEGORM called in to Cape Town for repairs to the boilers and inspected/signed off by Lloyds rep. Unloading cargo is mentioned in interviews with former crew too.

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I feel Rik's suggestion does have a fairly large chance of being correct. 

I'm hesitant to agree at the moment but always keep an open mind.

There are masses of aircraft spares plus the Fordson WOT3 that the Nortons are loaded in Hold No2 and there are at least 4 Crossley Q lorries blocking the way. From here it makes no sense to leave a lower cargo deck empty either? It feels like everything was loaded in Glasgow...but without a manifest its difficult to confirm.

That aside, it is curious India Office spec motorcycles are present. 

Edited April 14, 2023 by SimonBrown

[Noel7]

45 minutes ago, SimonBrown said:

That aside, it is curious India Office spec motorcycles are present. 

I don't know if it is relevant, but there were Indian Army units involved in both the Western Desert and East African campaigns, from about September 1940.

[rewdco]

6 hours ago, SimonBrown said:

That is new to me and thanks for sharing. Is there a copy of the specifications available anywhere?

This is a "works" photograph of the India Office Norton 16H. Please note the upswept silencer, pillion seat with set back rear carrier, large sump guard, front mudguard stay lifting handle, cylindrical air cleaner:

And these are "works" photographs of the India Office BSA. Please note the upswept silencer, pillion seat with set back rear carrier, tank mounted Talflow air cleaner:

There are lots of war time pictures with India Office Nortons. And of course, the Nortons on Thristlegorm are also India Office bikes (upswept silencer):

But I've never seen a war time photograph of an India Office BSA. The two "works" pictures above show the prototype bike, the question is if they have ever made a batch or a contract. I don't think so... Fact is that the BSAs on Thistlegorm are "normal" M20s, with a straight silencer:

@ administrator: please feel free to move the Thistlegorm content to a separate, dedicated thread... 😃

Edited April 14, 2023 by rewdco

[79x100]

This is quite funny, as "Rewdco" has taken his own thread "off-topic" 🙂

Indian Army troops formed a substantial part of the Aden Garrison and they were in and out of Somaliland in 1941, to use an expression favoured by my old dad, "like a fart in a colander"  This is a Wiki (yeah, I know...) extract relating to 7th Regt. of Madras Native Infantry. They moved to Egypt in July 1941, but presumably there were other units which followed. If this was a B.E.F. query, I'd have the information at my finger tips but the British Indian Army is not straightforward to research...It's not impossible that there were Indian Army Ordnance Corps depots at Aden which were supplying their forces in Egypt, but I wouldn't know where to start looking for diaries.

There are Ministry of Supply ledgers dating from 1941, detailing payments to Norton to crate machines for export...this method of lining up in the load beds of trucks is consistent with movements of a unit rather than the shi^ment of new machines. This is a later photo, but it shows how motorcycles were knocked down and crated for shipping. Space was at a premium.

[rewdco]

I've just discovered an "Instruction Book" for the India Office BSAs. According to this book, the frame and engine numbers that had been allotted for this contract were WM20.3101 - WM20.3557. But when we look in the factory ledgers, these numbers haven't been filled in. So mystery solved, apart from the prototype bike, there were no India Office BSAs.

[79x100]

From now on, I'll refer to them as "N.B.S.A.s" - "No Bikes Sent Anywhere" ! 😁

[79x100]

A double post...deleted.

 

Edited April 14, 2023 by 79x100
Incompetence

[SimonBrown]

There are (or were in 2017) a few saddles present on the upper deck BSA M20 motorbikes:

Upper Cargo Deck

As ever, be sure to zoom in. Detail is 1mm per pixel.

[rewdco]

Fantastic overview Simon, thanks for sharing!

Now just a thought... If all the Nortons are on the lower deck, and all the BSAs on the upper deck, wouldn't it be logical to assume that they were loaded at two different locations?

[SimonBrown]

49 minutes ago, rewdco said:

Fantastic overview Simon, thanks for sharing!

Now just a thought... If all the Nortons are on the lower deck, and all the BSAs on the upper deck, wouldn't it be logical to assume that they were loaded at two different locations?

Possibly logical, yes.

But the logic of loading an upper deck first and then sailing to Aden to fill a lower deck area makes little maritime sense - the weight distribution would be just wrong.

Along with the WOT3 trucks there are two Leyland Retriever flatbeds, the Crossley Qs and a pile of aircraft spares between hold access and where the Nortons are found.

The space to load and manhandle them to the furthest and hardest corners of the hold makes little sense to me?. If it were just the Nortons loaded in Aden then the Crossly or Leyland flatbeds would have been far easier as stowage locations.

Its possible the Indian Nortons were planned to be offloaded in Aden? Then the plans changed and cargo destination changed as demands in North Africa dictated?

 

[79x100]

Simon, It's pretty much impossible that these uncrated pre-war India-contract motorcycles were loaded in the UK during 1941 and I'm not aware of any Indian Army presence in South Africa, where the ship had previously docked.

Is it possible that this cargo replaced something that had been unloaded at Aden ? Obviously, I don't have the knowledge of the ship or any real idea of what would have been possible in the short stopover there. I've been passed a copy of WO169 / 3226, the War Diary for HQ Army Troops Aden, but it's skimpy and seems to stop at June...I'm chasing it up further. 

I see that some details of Thistlegorm's cargo have appeared on-line, but at very low resolution. I wonder if there any mention of motorcycles.

Going back on topic, do you know if the saddles photographed have rubber Lycett 'aerolastic' springing or steel Terry springs ? I imagine that the rubber would have survived better than spring steel.

[SimonBrown]

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Is it possible that this cargo replaced something that had been unloaded at Aden ? Obviously, I don't have the knowledge of the ship or any real idea of what would have been possible in the short stopover there.

Its possible I guess. Reading the movement card was the ship in Aden for 2 days or for 7? Not sure what the abbreviations mean on the card. The records may reveal more.

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I see that some details of Thistlegorm's cargo have appeared on-line, but at very low resolution. I wonder if there any mention of motorcycles.

Its low res and difficult to read. It's in a private collection and would be hesitant to draw conclusions from it at this stage.

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Going back on topic, do you know if the saddles photographed have rubber Lycett 'aerolastic' springing or steel Terry springs ? I imagine that the rubber would have survived better than spring steel.

I think they are steel. But not 100% certain.

[79x100]

I'm pretty sure that the movement card reads as follows :-

Due Aden 13/9

ar  (arrived) 18/9

sd (sailed) 20/9

Due Suez 26/9

Estimated disch.compl. abt.5/10 Oct (Estimated discharge completed about 5th October ?

She had been allocated on 23/9 to "Liner Div" ?  to load Mid-East to U.K.

I wonder what the reverse cargo would have been ?

It's a shame that the cargo list is not "out there" at high resolution so that it can be looked at closely by everyone.

[SimonBrown]

Re-reading this I would agree:

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Due Aden 13/9

ar  (arrived) 18/9

sd (sailed) 20/9

Due Suez 26/9

The "Due" in Aden was throwing me but comparing it to the one for Suez confirms.

2 days is a limited window of opportunity. Not sure how fast loading and unloading would take...apart from the hint of a full ship taking from due Suez 26th to 5th Oct estimated disch complete.

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I wonder what the reverse cargo would have been ?

Or indeed her next destination?

Quote

It's a shame that the cargo list is not "out there" at high resolution so that it can be looked at closely by everyone.

Agreed...it would be very useful to aid research.

Edited April 16, 2023 by SimonBrown

[Rob wd16h]

The Picture of a restored Lycett saddle in the "Lycett  for Nortons" part shows an incorrect configuration of the saddle elastics. Based on an original saddle mounted on a WD16H in March 1939, there should be short elastics at the side and long elastics in the middle as can be seen on attached picture. This set-up is also visible in the BSA and Triumph saddles.
Comparing the measurements based on this saddle and the lengths in the VAOS of the period it is shown that the elastics did not have identical elongation values (pre-stretch), being approx  15% for the short ones, 19% for the middle ones and 9% for the longest ones in the original configuration. These values are only valid for the contemporary (1936 to 1941) elastic chords. The elastic chord presently coming from Czech Republic appears to have a much higher modulus meaning they need much more force to obtain the same elongation and are thus to be longer than the original ones to have a lower pre-stretch to get a comparative similar in situ support function.  Unstretched lengths of the Czech chords need to be resp.  344, 443 and 494 mm to start with. How much pre-tension one wants can be determined by oneself.  Will add some more info on the www.wdnorton.nl website in the future.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Rob wd16h

[rewdco]

Good to see that we are "on topic" again! 😃

[Samsmc1]

This is a very interesting thread on Lycett and other saddles. Thanks for all the effort that went into this..

I need a Lycett saddle for a 1950 Triumph TR5 Trophy. The Triumph part number is F2992 and the description is "Lycett Aero Saddle". All other saddles listed for Triumph motorcycles in the same time period have a different part number (F1729) and do not list the saddle as (Aero). I think I see the difference between the Aero and later models. I still need to see how the correct frame looks as there are obviously many different frame configurations.

Can anyone send me a picture of what I need and maybe steer me in the right direction where I can start looking for this saddle? The bike is very nice and appears to me to be an extremely correct and nice older restoration - I really want to keep it correct if possible.

Thanks

Sam

 

[rewdco]

I'm not a Triumph specialist, and I'm not a post war specialist either. But I do know that before and during the war, Royal Enfield often used Terry saddles (both companies were Redditch based, so they were almost neighbours). I've just checked the post war Royal Enfield Model G parts lists (1946 up to 1953, see scan below), and they all show the Terry Universal. I can imagine that the "Universal" saddles became standard after the war (until the arrival of the dual seats)? In that case your Triumph would have had a Lycett Universal? Just my twopennies...

Edited January 25 by rewdco

[welbike]

I was offered a quantity of NOS Triumph TRW saddles from Pakistan some years ago, but my bid was not high enough, I think I lost the pictures the guy sent me, but here an NOS TRW, and a different saddle than the Universal type.

Lex

[welbike]

I did find the (not to good) pictures of the saddles, they seem to only be able to make useless video's there, and even worse pictures, sorry. 

These are presumed Triumph TRW, as there were many more parts from those bikes there.

Lex

[rewdco]

I've just made a few more changes to the Terry Universal and the Mansfield Universal saddle descriptions.

Edited February 23 by rewdco