Bsa Optics, Inc.

Description

In the First World War the BSA factories were turned over almost entirely to munitions work. Huge quantities of service rifles, machine guns, military motor-cycles, and the world's first folding bicycles were supplied to the troops. Right through the 30's, BSA rifle production had been confined to comparatively small quantities of sporting weapons. The company's considerable amount of arms plant had been maintained out of a sense of duty. It would take a book to describe fully the activities of the BSA organization during the last war. Apart from the company's own factories in Birmingham, Coventry, Redditch, Sheffield and Co. Durham, many dispersal units and shadow factories were used for the purpose of arms production. The Small Heath administration alone (BSA Cycles Ltd and BSA Guns Ltd) controlled 67 factories, employing 28,000 people and containing 25,000 machine tools. This organization produced more than half the small arms supplied to Britain's forces during the war. BSA's war production included nearly half a million of the Browning machine guns with which RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes won the Battle of Britain; one and a quarter million service rifles; 400,000 Sten guns; machine guns, cannon, anti-tank rifles, and gun carriages, ten million shell fuses, over three and a half million magazines, and 750,000 anti-aircraft rockets. Several Group factories were heavily bombed and at Small Heath more than 50 employees lost their lives...

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