George Patchett | |
|---|---|
| Nationality |  |
| Occupation(s) | Racer and specialist motorcycle designer |
| Known for | Motorcycle racing and world records |
George William Patchett (23 December 1901 - before 31 December 1974) was a British motorcycle racer and engineer.
George Patchett | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | |
| Occupation(s) | Racer and specialist motorcycle designer |
| Known for | Motorcycle racing and world records |
George William Patchett (23 December 1901 - before 31 December 1974) was a British motorcycle racer and engineer.
In his early career he was a motorcycle racer for motorcycle manufacturers such as Brough Superior, McEvoy and the Belgian arms company FN. At Pendine, Wales he won the Welsh TT in 1925 and the Welsh TT sidecar in 1927 on Brough machines.
In 1930 he was recruited by the Czech arms manufacturer František Janeček, founder of the JAWA motorcycle company, to work as an engineer and a racer. Due to the economic recession Janeček wanted to build a cheaper motorcycle than their 500cc model. Patchett's contacts with the Villiers company enabled a new Jawa 175 Villiers to be designed around the Villiers 175cc two-stroke engine which proved very popular. [1]
Patchett was an amateur photographer and took photos and videos of the Nazi Occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939. [2] At the outbreak of World War II, Patchett returned to England and started work under the auto-engineer George Lanchester at the Sterling Armaments Company in Dagenham, Essex, helping to gear up manufacture of the Lanchester sub-machine gun. On his way out of Prague he managed to throw prototype samples of Janeček's new anti-tank device over the wall of the British Embassy. [1]
By 1942, he was leading a design team to design a new sub-machine gun to the army's specification which was referred to as the "Patchett Machine Carbine". After successfully taking part in extensive army trials in the mid to late 1940s the Sterling submachine gun was adopted by the British Army to replace the Sten gun and known by them as the "9mm Sterling sub-machine gun L2A1". A modified version, the L2A3, was the very popular Sterling Mk IV which saw service until the 1990s. [3]
In 1966, the High Court awarded Patchett £116,975 (£2.75 million as of 2024) for the British government's use of the machine gun he patented. The same amount was awarded to Sterling, which had sued for half a million pounds. Mr. Justice Lloyd-Jacob referred to Patchett as "a distinguished inventor and valued designer" in making the award. [4]
The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited (BSA) was a major British industrial combine, a group of businesses manufacturing military and sporting firearms; bicycles; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron castings; hand, power, and machine tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered metals; and hard chrome process.
The STEN is a British submachine gun chambered in 9×19mm which was used extensively by British and Commonwealth forces throughout World War II and during the Korean War. The Sten paired a simple design with a low production cost, facilitating mass production to meet the demand for submachine guns.
The Lanchester is a submachine gun manufactured by the Sterling Armaments Company between 1941 and 1945. It is an evolution from MP28/II and was manufactured in two versions, Mk.1 and Mk.1*; the latter was a simplified version of the original Mk.1, with no fire selector and simplified sights. It was primarily used by the Royal Navy during the Second World War, and to a lesser extent by the Royal Air Force Regiment. It was given the general designation of Lanchester after George Lanchester, who was charged with producing the weapon at the Sterling Armaments Company.
A. J. Stevens & Co. Ltd was a British automobile and motorcycle manufacturer in operation from 1909 to 1931. The company was founded by Joe Stevens in Wolverhampton, England. After the firm was sold, the name continued to be used by Matchless, Associated Motorcycles and Norton-Villiers on four-stroke motorcycles until 1969, and since the name's resale in 1974, on lightweight, two-stroke scramblers and today on small-capacity roadsters and cruisers. The company held 117 motorcycle world records.
The Sterling submachine gun is a British submachine gun (SMG). It was tested by the British Army in 1944–1945, but did not start to replace the Sten until 1953. A successful and reliable design, it remained standard issue in the British Army until 1994, when it began to be replaced by the L85A1, a bullpup assault rifle.
Excelsior, based in Coventry, was a British bicycle, motorcycle and car maker. They were Britain’s first motorcycle manufacturer, starting production of their own ‘motor-bicycle’ in 1896. Initially they had premises at Lower Ford Street, Coventry, and 287-295 Stoney Stanton Road, Hillfields, Coventry, Warwickshire before moving to Kings Road, Tyseley, Birmingham in 1921.
The Błyskawica was a submachine gun produced by the Armia Krajowa, or Home Army, a Polish resistance movement fighting the Germans in occupied Poland. Together with a Polish version of the Sten sub-machine gun, with which it shares some design elements, it was the only weapon mass-produced covertly in occupied Europe during World War II.
JAWA is a motorcycle and moped manufacturer founded in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1929 by František Janeček, who bought the motorcycle division of Wanderer. The name JAWA was established by concatenating the first letters of Janeček and Wanderer. In the past, especially in the 1950s, JAWA was one of the top motorcycle manufacturers and exported its 350 model to over 120 countries. The best known model was the 350 Pérák, and in the 1970s the 350 Californian. It appeared in typical black and red coloring from the US to New Zealand. After 1990 a significant loss of production occurred. A successor company was formed in 1997 in Týnec nad Sázavou, continuing the name as JAWA Moto.
Matchless is one of the oldest marques of British motorcycles, manufactured in Plumstead, London, between 1899 and 1966. A wide range of models were produced under the Matchless name, ranging from small two-strokes to 750 cc four-stroke twins. Matchless had a long history of racing success; a Matchless ridden by Charlie Collier won the first single-cylinder race in the first Isle of Man TT in 1907.
The CETME C2 is a Spanish submachine gun based on the British Sterling L2A3. It is an open-bolt, blowback-operated firearm that fires the 9×23mm Largo and 9×19mm Parabellum pistol cartridge. Designed in the 1960s, the C2 has many notable safety features built into it and was later used to replace the Star Model Z-45 submachine gun series for Spain in the 1960s however, was later superseded by the MP5 and Star Z-84.
Montgomery Motorcycles was a pioneering British motorcycle manufacturer. Originally based in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, following the First World War manufacturing was moved to Coventry. Its founder William Montgomery was an innovator and is credited with the invention of the sidecar. Like Brough, Montgomery made use of the best proprietary components from other specialist companies and concentrated on the production of frames and forks in-house - and Montgomery supplied a number of frames and its own sprung fork to George Brough. In an advert from the time, Montgomery claimed "These Montgomery machines are for the men who prefer a distinctive mount in appearance and performance. That extra degree of soundness – those little touches which distinguish the 'super' machine from the mere motorcycle, come naturally to the Montgomery and at a price that is amazingly low."
The Sterling Engineering Company Ltd was an arms manufacturer based in Dagenham, famous for manufacturing the Sterling submachine gun (L2A3), ArmaLite AR-18 and Sterling SAR-87 assault rifles and parts of Jaguar cars. The company went bankrupt in 1988.
The BSA Experimental Model 1949 was a submachine gun of British origin intended to replace the Sten submachine gun. The weapon was fed from a 32-round box magazine inserted in the side and had an unusual twist-action bakelite-covered handguard.
The following outline is provided as an overview of motorcycles and motorcycling:
McEvoy Motorcycles was a British motorcycle manufacturer based in Derby. The company used engines from Villiers, Blackburne, British Anzani and JAP. The company ceased trading in 1929 when the financier Cecil 'Archie' Birkin was killed in an accident at the Isle of Man TT.
František Janeček (1878–1941) was the founder of Jawa motorcycles and an important figure in the development of the Czech motorcycle industry. He died on 4 June 1941.
Patchett is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Danuvia, known fully as Danuvia Engineering Industries Rt., was a Hungarian manufacturer founded in 1920 that produced firearms, munitions, machine tools and motorcycles for the Central and Eastern European armies and markets.
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