I have long been amazed by the stuff that was created for war use and then stuck around to help boost the postwar economy. The Jeep was a biggie. It was created specifically for World War II. The specs were so unforgiving, the manufacturer even thinned the paint to meet the weight limitation.
After the war, Willys and later Chrysler parlayed the little four-wheeler into an American icon. Radar was another wartime invention, and so were early computers.
One machine that didn’t fare so well was the Cushman Airborne, a bare bones motor scooter the Army ordered in 1944. The plan was to parachute the scooters in with airborne troops during the waning days of the war in Germany as an accelerated means of moving the soldiers forward once they were on the ground.
The scooters were well designed with fat tires that could absorb the bumps of rough terrain, a rugged gearbox that would enable the machine to climb steep hills, and a tough little Husky engine that reportedly got 75 miles per gallon.
The problem with the scooter was its weight. At 255 pounds, the thing parachuted to the ground at near rocket speed, which caused it to break in half. Field commanders told the top brass an easy fix would be to strap it to a larger parachute.
The Pentagon thought the issue should be solved by Cushman, however, and sent the problem back to them. Not being experts in what happens when large objects are dropped out of airplanes, the scooter folks simply added a shock-absorbing spring system that wrapped around the scooter. Unfortunately, it also added another 50 pounds to the machine, which caused it to pretty much disintegrate on impact.
After intensive experimenting and head scratching, the Army ultimately scrapped the project after buying less than 5,000 of the scooters. Cushman, seeing no requirement for dropping them out of airplanes in peacetime, however, continued building the scrappy little machines, and sold thousands of them after the war under the pretentious title of, “War Winners.”
Whatever failure went into the Cushman wartime record for the Airborne scooter, the company more than made up for it by manufacturing more than 8.5 million bomb fuses during the war.
Cushman continued to build scooters until the 1970s when the company was sold. Some, configured as golf carts, meter maid police vehicles and Postal Service mail carriers are still around, still running strong.
And every once in awhile, you may still see someone putt-putting down the street on a Cushman Airborne. Presumably, one that was not dropped out of an airplane.
