Editing Birmingham Small Arms Company (section)

===Second World War===
[[File:Daimler mark 14 x 4 armoured car - Imperial War Museum 1.jpg|thumb|[[Daimler Armoured Car]]]]
By the outbreak of the Second World War, BSA Guns Ltd at Small Heath, was the only factory producing rifles in the UK.  The [[Royal Ordnance Factory|Royal Ordnance Factories]] did not begin production until 1941.  BSA Guns Ltd was also producing [[M1919 Browning machine gun|.303 Browning machine gun]]s for the [[Air Ministry]] (the main aircraft armament at the time) at the rate of 600 guns per week in March 1939 and Browning production was to peak at 16,390 per month by March 1942.  The armed forces had chosen the 500 cc side-valve [[BSA M20]] motorcycle as their preferred machine. On the outbreak of war the Government requisitioned the 690 machines BSA had in stock as well as placing an order for another 8,000 machines. South Africa, Ireland, India, Sweden and the Netherlands also wanted machines.

The Government passed the [[Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939]] on 24 August allowing the drafting of defence regulations affecting food, travel, requisitioning of land and supplies, manpower and agricultural production. A second Emergency Powers (Defence) Act was passed on 22 May 1940 allowing the conscription of labour. The fall of France had not been anticipated in Government planning and the encirclement of a large part of the [[British Expeditionary Force (World War II)|British Expeditionary Force]] into the Dunkirk pocket resulted in a hasty [[Dunkirk evacuation|evacuation]] of that part of the B.E.F following the abandonment of their equipment. The parlous state of affairs "no arms, no transport, no equipment" in the face of the threat of imminent invasion of Britain by [[Nazi Germany|Nazi]] forces was recorded by the [[Chief of the Imperial General Staff]] Field Marshal Sir [[Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke]] in his diary entries of the 1/2 July 1940.<ref>''War Diaries 1939 -1945'' Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, London 2001, {{ISBN|0-297-60731-6}}</ref>
[[File:BSA G14 with sidecar and machine gun.JPG|thumb|G14 with [[sidecar]] and [[Lewis gun]]]]
The creation of the [[Home Guard (United Kingdom)|Home Guard]] (initially as the Local Defence Volunteers) following [[Anthony Eden]]'s broadcast appeal to the Nation on Tuesday 14 May 1940 also created further demand for arms production to equip this new force. BSA, as the only rifle producer in Britain, had to step up to the mark and the workforce voluntarily went onto a seven-day week.<ref name="ReferenceA">''BSA Centenary 1861 - 1961, BSA Group News, No.17 June 1961'', The Birmingham Small Arms Company, no ISBN</ref> Motorcycle production was also stepped up from 500 to 1,000 machines per week which meant a finished machine coming off the production line every 5 minutes. The motorcycle department had been left intact in 1939 due to demand which was doubled following Dunkirk. At the same time BSA staff were providing lectures and demonstrations on motorcycle riding and maintenance to 250,000 officers and men in all parts of the UK.

The BSA factory at Small Heath was [[Battle of Britain#Raids on British cities|bombed]] by the [[Luftwaffe]] on 26 August 1940 resulting in one high explosive bomb and a shower of incendiaries hitting the main barrel mill which was the only one operating on service rifles in the country, causing the unaffordable loss of 750 [[machine tool]]s but fortunately no loss of life.<ref name="ReferenceB">''BSA Centenary 1861 - 1961, BSA Group News, No. 17 June 1961'', The Birmingham Small Arms Company, no ISBN</ref> Two further [[Birmingham Blitz|Blitz air raids]] took place on 19 and 22 November 1940.<ref name="Godwin">Godwin, Tommy ''It wasn't that easy - The Tommy Godwin story'', John Pinkerton Memorial Publishing Fund, 2007, {{ISBN|978-0-9552115-5-3}}</ref> The air raid of 19 November did the most damage, causing loss of production and trapping hundreds of workers. Since BSA was the sole producer of the main aircraft armament, the resulting delays in productions reportedly caused most worries to PM Churchill among all the industrial damage during the [[The Blitz|Blitz]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.key.aero/article/ww2s-shadow-factory-raids | title=WW2's Shadow factory raids | date=30 March 2021 }}</ref>

Two BSA night-shift electricians, Alf Stevens and Alf Goodwin, helped rescue their fellow workers.  Alf Stevens was awarded the [[George Medal]] for his selfless acts of bravery in the rescue and Alf Goodwin was awarded the [[British Empire Medal]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=From Weapons to Wheels |url=https://www.keymilitary.com/article/weapons-wheels |access-date=2022-04-01 |website=www.keymilitary.com |date=15 February 2018 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) and Singer Motors: A view from the main gate showing the damage at the BSA works after a major air raid in the Second World War |url=https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/misc/misc_bsa&singer339.htm |access-date=2022-04-01 |website=www.warwickshirerailways.com}}</ref> Workers involved in the works [[Air Raid Precautions|Civil Defence]] were brought in to help search for and clear bodies to get the plant back into production.  The net effect of the November raids was to destroy machine shops in the four-storey 1915 building, the original 1863 gunsmiths' building and nearby buildings, 1,600 machine tools, kill 53 employees, injure 89, 30 of them seriously and halt rifle production for three months.
[[File:IWM-E-16827-light-tank-AA-MkI-19420915.jpg|thumb|Four Besa machine guns mounted on a [[Light Tank Mk VI|Vickers Tank, Light, AA Mk I]]]]
The Government [[Ministry of Supply]] and BSA immediately began a process of production dispersal throughout Britain, through the [[British shadow factories|shadow factory]] scheme. Factories were set up at [[Tipton]], [[Dudley]], [[Smethwick]], [[Blackheath, West Midlands|Blackheath]], [[Lye, West Midlands|Lye]], [[Kidderminster]], [[Stourport-on-Severn|Stourport]], [[Tyseley]], and [[Bromsgrove]] to manufacture Browning machine guns, [[Stoke-on-Trent|Stoke]], [[Corsham]], and [[Newcastle-under-Lyme]] produced the [[Hispano-Suiza HS.404|Hispano cannon]], [[Leicester]] and [[Redditch|Studley Road]] produced the [[Besa machine gun]], [[Ruislip]] produced the [[Oerlikon 20mm cannon]], [[Stafford]] produced [[RP-3|rocket projectiles]], [[Tamworth, Staffordshire|Tamworth]] produced [[Ordnance QF 2 pounder|two-pounder gun carriages]], [[Mansfield]] produced the [[Boys anti-tank rifle|Boys Anti-tank gun]] and [[Solihull|Shirley]] produced rifles. These were dispersal factories which were in addition to Small Heath and the other BSA factories opened in the two years following the 1940 blitz. At its peak Small Heath was running 67 factories engaged in war production. BSA operations were also dispersed to other companies under licence.
[[File:Thinktank Birmingham - object 1983S03719(2).jpg|thumb|[[Parachute bicycle]]]]
In 1941 BSA was approached to produce a new pedal cycle with a maximum weight allowance of only 22&nbsp;lb especially for [[Airborne forces|airborne]] use.  This required a new concept in frame design which BSA found, producing a machine which weighed 21&nbsp;lb, one pound less than the design specification and which also exceeded the design requirement for an effective life of 50 miles many times over. Over 60,000 [[folding bicycle]]s were produced, a figure equal to half the total production of military bicycles during World War II. BSA also produced [[Welbike|folding motorcycles]] for the Airborne Division. In late 1942 BSA examined the [[Special Operations Executive]] designed [[BSA Welgun|Welgun]] with a view to manufacture. BSA were willing to manufacture the gun in the quantities required starting April 1943 but the cheaper and less accurate Sten Mk IV was adopted for production by the Ministry of Supply.<ref>Boyce, Frederick and Everett, Douglas, ''S.O.E.- The Scientific Secrets'' Stroud, Gloucester, 2003, {{ISBN|0-7509-3165-5}}</ref> BSA bought the [[Sunbeam Cycles|Sunbeam]] motorcycles and bicycle business from [[Associated Motor Cycles|Associated Motor Cycles Ltd]] in 1943 and then [[Ariel Motorcycles|Ariel Motors Ltd]] in 1944. During the course of the conflict BSA produced 1,250,000 Lee–Enfield .303 service rifles, 404,383 [[Sten]] sub-machine guns, 468,098 Browning machine guns plus spares equivalent to another 100,000, 42,532 Hispano cannon, 32,971 Oerlikon cannon, 59,322 7.9&nbsp;mm Besa machine guns, 3,218 15&nbsp;mm Besa machine guns, 68,882 Boys Anti-tank guns, 126,334 motorcycles, 128,000 military bicycles (over 60,000 of which were folding paratrooper bicycles), 10,000,000 shell fuse cases, 3,485,335 magazines and 750,000 anti-aircraft rockets were supplied to the armed forces.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

At the same time other parts of the Group were having similar problems. Before World War II Daimler had been linked with other Coventry motor manufacturers in a government-backed scheme for aero engine manufacture and had been allocated two shadow factories. Apart from this, BSA-owned Daimler was producing [[Daimler Dingo|Scout Cars]] and Daimler Mk I Armoured Cars which had been designed by BSA at Small Heath not Coventry as well as gun turrets, gun parts, tank transmissions, rocket projectiles and other munitions. This activity had not gone unnoticed by the enemy, which made Radford Works a target in the [[Coventry Blitz|Coventry air raids]]. Radford Works received direct hits in four separate air raids during 1940. None of these attacks were to seriously disrupt production, however two more serious air raids were carried out in April 1941 which destroyed half the factory. In all it is estimated that 170 bombs containing 52,000&nbsp;lbs of explosive were dropped on Radford Works as well as the thousands of incendiaries. Like BSA, Daimler had to find dispersal units.<ref name="ReferenceB"/> A back-handed compliment was paid by Field Marshal [[Erwin Rommel|Rommel]] to the workers at Radford Works when he used a captured Daimler Scout to escape following his defeat at [[Second Battle of El Alamein|El Alamein]].