History of the 1938 R-71/75 BMW, Ural and Chinese Army Chang Jiang Motorcycle with Side Car
The history of the 1938 BMW R-71 and R-75 and the World War II Ural motorcycles begins with the pre-WW II planning of Joseph Stalin. Knowing that Russia would soon be at war with the Hitler’s Germany.
Germany’s Sidecar Weapon
The Special Forces had thousands of BMW sidecars that the German army loved for their maneuverability, reliability, economy, and ease of maintenance.
Carrying a machine gun and solider with supplies, the sidecar “weapon” was so feared by the otherwise “fixed” Russian ground troops, that the side car motorcycle soon became a legend.
Prisoner of War Tech Transfer
Despite the utility of the vehicle, the Russian campaign didn’t go too well for the Germans. When I lived in Russia, I found out from some of my friends that the expertise of the Russian factory that had created a similar bike to the German BMW, the Ural, was helped a great deal by captured German engineers.
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