The Flying Flea Has Landed

In the Second World War, Royal Enfield delivered the Flying Flea, an innovative motorcycle that could be airdropped by parachute behind enemy lines. Once it landed, all a paratrooper had to do was unscrew the single wing nut, lift the bike out, rotate the handlebars 90 degrees, kickstart and go… a matter of seconds!

Simple, tough and resilient, the Royal Enfield Flying Flea, or WD/RE to give it its official title, was deployed as a front line combat machine during the latter stages of the Second World War.

An invaluable asset to the elite soldiers of the newly-formed Parachute Regiment, it was parachuted behind enemy lines, carried in assault gliders or ferried to the beaches of Normandy in amphibious landing craft.

Ironically, the Flea was originally a German design. Launched in 1934, the DKW RT100 was one of the most reliable and best selling motorcycles of the 1930s.

In 1938, the Nazis pressured DKW’s Dutch distributor, R S Stokvis & Zonen, to fire its Jewish directors or lose its DKW franchise. Rather than bow to this anti-Semitic coercion, the company promptly despatched an RT100 to Royal Enfield in England with a request to reverse-engineer the motorcycle and supply them directly.

Enfield’s chief designer, Ted Pardoe, set to work, replicating the frame and forks but enlarging the engine capacity from 98 to 126cc. The result weighed just 56 kg and its one-and-a-half gallon fuel tank gave a range of around 150 miles while travelling between 35 and 40mph.

It had a three-speed, hand-change gearbox and, thanks to a low compression piston, its engine could run on the poorest quality fuel. The front forks were formed from pressed steel blades with undamped suspension provided by three stout rubber bands - somewhat crude and rather bouncy but inexpensive and effective.

Royal Enfield named it the Royal Baby but only a handful were produced. War broke out and supplying Stokvis & Zonen became impossible.

As in the First World War, Royal Enfield’s production of civilian motorcycles was soon halted and it was required to take on a wide range of work to support the war effort. As well as bicycles, munitions and ancillary equipment, this involved supplying 250cc and 350cc motorcycles to the British armed forces, largely for convoy escort duties and despatch riders.

Britain had no airborne forces in 1939 but Churchill, impressed by the success of the FallschirmjÄger, German paratroopers, operations in Norway, France and Holland in the spring of 1940, ordered the formation of a 5,000-strong parachute and glider-borne force.

The British Parachute Regiment’s first outings, Operation Colossus in Italy and Operation Biting in northern France, highlighted the need for rapid field communications.

Experiments were carried out with folding bicycles strapped to paratroops but these proved both unwieldy and unpopular. A motorcycle was the obvious choice but all those currently in use by the army were too heavy.

The Royal Baby’s transformation from lightweight commuter to airborne war hero came about largely due to one man, Arthur Bourne. Writing under the pen name of Torrens, Bourne was editor of the bestselling weekly magazine, The Motor Cycle, and had previously test-ridden a DKW.

He could see the benefits of a machine that a soldier could lift over a wall, carry across a river on his shoulder or easily manoeuvre over difficult terrain, and set about persuading the War Office of the little Royal Enfield’s merits by arranging a demonstration.

Arthur Bourne’s eldest son Richard explains: ‘When he got there, all the officers just pooh-poohed it, saying “What’s this ridiculous little machine? How on earth can it be any use to us?”’

However, Bourne was an experienced trials rider and competently overcame a successions of obstacles, such as logs and bomb craters, on the little Enfield. Richard adds: “Some of the officers had a go and found to their surprise that this machine could do lots of things.”

Major General Frederick Browning, commander of the 1st Airborne Division, was himself a motorcyclist. At the end of Bourne’s demonstration he declared: “We must have these.”

The future of the WD/RE was sealed.

The War Office requested several modifications to the motorcycle’s layout, which included horizontally rotating handlebars, folding footpegs and kickstart, a Villiers carburettor complete with gauze air filter, a leak-proof petrol cap in case it landed on its side, and a taller seat. Probably the most important addition was an expansion chamber incorporated into the exhaust to dampen the noise when it was ridden.

Tubular steel parachute drop cradles were commissioned to protect the Flea when it landed. These had to accommodate a parachute in two alternative positions so that it could be thrown out of an open aircraft doorway or suspended under its wings.

Once the final design was approved, Royal Enfield set up an additional factory at Calton Hill in Edinburgh to produce drop cradles that could be carried by Dakota, Halifax, Lancaster and Albermarle aircraft in either their bomb bays or suspended under their wings.

Once all modifications were complete and the prototypes had passed drop tests, an initial order for 4000 WD/REs was placed, with an additional 4000 to follow.

The motorcycles were painted Standard Camouflage Number Two, or ‘Fresh Dogshit Brown’ in unofficial British Army jargon, instead of the preferred colour of drab olive green. This was due to U-boat attacks on merchant ships which caused a shortage of zinc chromate, a key ingredient in green paint.

Very soon, the motorcycle acquired the moniker, the Flying Flea.

Once the Flea had landed, all a paratrooper had to do was unscrew the single wingnut that held the two halves of the drop cradle together, lift the bike out, rotate the handlebars ninety degrees and kick the engine to life, all of which could be achieved in a matter of seconds.

The Flea’s primary roles were reconnaissance and to establish communications between dispersed Airborne units, a vital task in the days of unreliable portable valve radios.

Many were dropped ahead of the D-Day landings and during Operation Market Garden, a daring Allied attempt to shorten the war by entering Germany from Holland over a series of captured bridges. It was the largest airborne operation in history, which saw more than 34,000 men land behind enemy lines, and culminated in the notorious Battle of Arnhem where besieged and outnumbered paratroopers held out against German tank divisions for seven days.

However, not all Fleas were parachuted in this manner. A high percentage were transported alongside assault troops inside Horsa gliders and some were even carried ashore from Royal Navy landing craft during coastal assaults, especially the Normandy D-Day landings when so-called ‘beachmasters’ used the bikes to round up stray troops and direct them off the beaches.

As it was essentially a disposable piece of battlefield equipment, many did not survive the war and virtually all parachute cradles were lost. Indeed, after Operation Market Garden a great number of these were gathered up by the Wehrmacht and sent by train to Germany so the steel could be recycled.

Nevertheless, a significant percentage of Fleas were bought back from the War Office at the end of hostilities. Along with 350cc Model Cs and COs, they were refurbished at the Royal Enfield works and, with the aid of some gloss black paint, converted for use in Civvy Street. They were then sold cheaply to the British public, including many demobbed servicemen, hungry for affordable two-wheeled transport.

The Royal Enfield Flying Flea - an airborne motorcycle designed in Germany that, thanks to undaunted Dutch motorcycle dealers, a talented Royal Enfield designer, a visionary journalist and thousands of brave paratroops, helped win the war.