BSA Guns
Note: this is a sub-section of BSA
of Small Heath, Birmingham.Telephone: Central 6440 (9 lines).T.A.: "Armoury, Birmingham". (1929)
of Birmingham, 11. Telephone: Birmingham, Victoria 2381 (20 lines). Cables: As above. (1947)
- 1861 Company formed. The object of forming the company was to begin making small arms by machinery to meet the growing competition from the mechanised government factory at Enfield. A 25 acre site was bought at Small Heath, (then just outside the Birmingham boundary), and two years later the factory was in operation.
- 1864 First Government military arms contract.
- By 1866 the company could record a profit of £7,000 and in a few short years it became the largest private arms manufacturer in Europe. One order from the Prussian government,then at war with Austria, was not for rifles but for cartridge cases - 40 million of them. Rather than turn it down the directors acquired a munitions factory and changed the title to the Birmingham Small Arms and Metal Company Limited.
- 1870s Towards the end of the decade, the Small Heath factory was completely closed for twelve months and the future looked impossibly dark. A small contract enabled the works to be opened again.
- 1880 Fate took a hand in the shape of an inventor, E. C. F. Otto, who had designed a strange type ofwith two large wheels on either side of the rider. He demonstrated it by riding on the boardroom table under the noses of the astonished directors - and so impressed them that they put the device into production immediately.
- This first venture into the transport field was followed by more conventional bicycles and tricycles, but a sudden increase in the demand for rifles at the end of the 1880s caused the directors to drop cycle work. During the Boer Wars (1880 to 1881 and 1899 to 1902) the company supplied many thousands of rifles to the British forces.
- 1897 The company reverted to its original title. The early prosperity was short-lived. As wars ceased, the demand for weapons fell, and the private arms trade was the first to suffer.
- 1910 The company makes the Lee-Enfield Rifle (consisting of 97 component parts) and cycle parts. They have 16 steam hammers, 24 steam drop hammers, 13 Ryder forging machines, 5 Oliver hammers and 60 smiths' hearths.
- 1914 Manufacturers of military rifles for HM Government, sporting and match rifles, the BSA air rifle, the WO miniature rifle, BSA cycles, motor cycles and cycle fittings, BSA motor cars, BSA small tools, gauges etc., shot gun barrels. Employees 5,250.
- WWI In the First World War the BSA factories were turned over almost entirely to munitions work. Huge quantities of service rifles, machine guns, military motorcycles, and the world's first folding bicycles were supplied to the troops.
- 1919 The company restructured into three divisions. BSA Guns Ltd became a private company.
- 1929 Listed Exhibitor - British Industries Fair.Manufacturers of BSA 12-bore and .410-bore Shot Guns, BSA Rifles, including High Velocity Sporting; .303 and .22 Target and Sporting, Repeating and Air Rifles.BSA Scientific Cleaners, etc.(Stand No. B.4)
- 1930s Right through the 30s, 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 organisation during the last war.
- Apart from the company's own factories in Birmingham, Coventry, Redditch, Sheffield and Durham, many dispersal units and shadow factories were used for the purpose of arms production. The Small Heath administration alone (BSA Cycles and BSA Guns) controlled 67 factories, employing 28,000 people and containing 25,000 machine tools. This organisation produced more than half the small arms supplied to Britain's forces during the war.
- WWII 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 (Lee Enfield .303); 400,000 Sten guns; machine guns (568,100 .303 Browning and 60,000 BESA 7.92), 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. At this works alone, more machine tools were destroyed or damaged by enemy action than were lost in the whole of the Coventry blitz.
- 1947 Listed Exhibitor - British Industries Fair. Manufacturers of Guns and Rifles for Sporting and Target Purposes, (Olympia, 1st First, Stand No. F.1814)
- 1961 Employs 1,350 persons producing rifle, shot-gun and air-rifles.
- Although the company no longer makes military weapons, BSA Guns Ltd maintains a steady flow of air rifles, hunting rifles and sporting guns to most parts of the world, exporting its manufactured products.
- As an emblem of their craft they adopted the sign of three crossed rifles, which has since become world-known as the Piled Arms trademark.
See Also
Source: Graces Guide