The Ariel NG 350 was introduced in 1932 and sat within the popular Red Hunter line-up. The 348cc overhead-valve motorcycle was aimed at riders wanting a reliable, mid-sized machine for every day use. It was relatively light and simple to maintain, which made it the ideal foundation for a wartime mount. Fast forward a few years then, when war erupted across the globe, and Ariel stepped up to the mark with a military variant – a bike which would see action across deserts of North Africa, to the muddy fields of Europe. This is the story of one such machine, written by Christian Rohr (with thanks).
In Spring 2022, I received a call from a friend who had in 2020 informed me about a completely original wartime Ariel 350 with “German writing on the petrol tank”. He said that the then current owner located in Germany wanted to sell the bike but ideally, he wanted it to return to the UK, as it was the ‘right thing to do’. By July 2022, I had of course completed the deal and had transported the bike back to the UK.
Before purchasing the bike, the Ariel Owner’s Club confirmed that it was indeed matching frame, engine and gearbox numbers as recorded in the factory ledgers and that remarkably the bike was the oldest known survivor of the 255 “French Contract” bikes shipped to France in 1940. Earlier that year, the French Government had placed an order for 500 Ariel NG motorcycles, which happened to be the Company’s very first batch of 350cc military bikes.
A French contract Ariel NG350 – one of the 255 shipped to France
But let’s take a step back in time to war-torn Europe when the bike’s incredible journey first began on the 14th May 1940, the date it left the factory as part of an ongoing supply of vehicles & equipment being shipped to France via the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF) routes from Portsmouth or Bristol to Le Harve or Cherbourg, although according to the previous owner’s research, the bike was captured at Dunkirk.
By the 20th May, the unstoppable Blitzkrieg had split France straight through the middle with the Wehrmacht successfully reaching the coastline after leaving the French defence in tatters. By the 4th June, the Germans had taken Dunkirk with 338,000 Allied troops heading back to the UK, most notably by the heroics of the men who bravely sailed the ‘little ships’ from England to Dunkirk to ‘save our boys’.
At this stage of the research, it’s unknown whether the bike ever left the shipping crate after its arrival in France, but it did find its way into the hands of the Germans, as the Wehrmacht was heavily reliant on captured vehicles for their own use. In 1940, the Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine convinced most people that the German army was fully mechanised when in fact it was an estimated 30% only with everything else being transported by trains, horses and bicycles.
After the Fall of France/Dunkirk in June 1940, the balance of the undelivered 245 Ariel NG 350 bikes ordered by the French, were re-distributed to the British Forces and as such were re-categorised as W/NG 350 under contract C8302.
After the Germans captured this bike, they resprayed it Panzer Grey straight over the top of its original Khaki Green and assigned it to the 2nd Army Group, who were formed for the invasion of France. Remarkably, the bike still retains its original Wehrmacht numberplate with the very faint remains of the German eagle red stamp still present.
To help understand the bike’s incredible journey, we must follow the 2nd Army Group’s path east where in the Spring of 1941, they joined the main Army Group Centre, one of three main Army Groups formed for the invasion of the Soviet Union on the 21st June, otherwise known as Operation Barbarossa. North & South were the other two Groups.
The history books tell us that the Army Group Centre successfully advanced from Bialystok across to Bryansk and defended against Soviet counterattack near Kursk and in 1942, it covered the northern wing of ‘Case Blue’ operating around Voronezh. However, it suffered a major defeat at Voronezh-Kastorensk, the Soviet winter offensive that followed the battle of Stalingrad, which ended in February 1943.
Coincidentally, in February 1943, the German hierarchy issued a directive stating that all new vehicles and any existing vehicles requiring a respray were to be painted Dunkelgelb, translated to English as ‘dark yellow’, which most people know it as a ‘desert colour’. By this point in the war, the Germans were running low on most resources and therefore formed a process to make paint from earth pigment, which would explain the earthy/beige colour of the third & final layer of paint on the bike.
Intriguingly, stencilled in red onto the petrol tank are the military markings ‘P1 ahv’ followed by the number ‘5’. Through lots of research, it’s likely the P1 relates to Person 1 meaning the rider and the lower case ‘ahv’ denotes ‘allgemeines heeresgerat verwendung’ translated, ‘general army equipment’ and the 5 is the gross weight of the bike, for example, 1 = 50kg, therefore, 5 = 250kg, which would have been the approximate gross weight for a 350cc bike, soldier and his equipment.
By September 1943, the bike somehow ended up in the town of Reichenberg Czechoslovakia, which by this point had lost its Czech name of Liberec, and into the hands of Otto Seidel, who through the 1920s/30s & into the 40s was an Ariel dealer, motorcycle racer and founder of the Ariel Owners Motorcycle Club in Czechoslovakia.
Otto Seidel Ariel dealer Bike racer & Founder of the Ariel owners club Czechoslovakia
As evidenced by the hand-painted writing on the petrol tank below the red military stencilling, Otto kept the bike in his workshop from the 27th September 1943, road tested it for 8 kms and handed it back to its Wehrmacht Unit on the 18th September 1944.
The grand hall in Prague where in March 1929 Jack Sangster (Ariel CEO) set up a meeting with the Ariel dealers in Czechoslovakia. Otto Seidel is on the left in the picture.
Clearly the bike had suffered battle/crash damage but seemingly due to the unavailability of Ariel parts, numerous components had to be replaced with German components to make it road worthy again. The bike has a Zundapp KS600 headlight painted in Panzer Grey, Zundapp high/low beam & horn switch, a kph speedometer, Magura handlebar grips, a lever throttle replaced the twist grip, a BMW rear silencer, Jawa righthand rider’s footpeg rubber, crudely assembled pillion footpegs with Gefrag rubbers, a four-spring pillion seat with the underside made of horsehair and what is believed to be a Bosch rear light, which has a melted lens.
Research has shown that it was common practice for the Germans to write information on a captured vehicle because, for example, if ever the vehicle broke down or needed a service, they would know who to contact for repairs. It made perfect sense for the Germans to have identified local dealers/workshops specialising in this case British motorcycles as the workshop would have had the knowledge to carry out the necessary maintenance including any repairs.
So, what happened to the bike after it left Otto’s workshop in 1944?
On a much wider scale across the 1000 miles Eastern front line, the Soviets were winning the war and were pushing the Germans right back into Germany. The Germans fought hard but the reality was that the Soviet’s greatly outnumbered them and were taking brutal revenge for the atrocities committed by the Germans earlier in the war.
In 1945 towards the end of the war in Czechoslovakia, a German soldier riding the Ariel through the small village of Dubenec, approximately one hour from Reichenberg, had a problem with the bike. He approached a local farmer and said that he needed to leave the bike at the farm. The soldier and the farmer pushed the bike into a nearby barn with the soldier insisting, “leave it there, I will be back” but the soldier never returned.
The farmer, concerned that someone would turn up to collect the bike even several years after the war, left the bike in the barn untouched until 1992, when it was purchased by the collector from Germany. The collector transported the bike back to his house in Munich, where it stayed on display until 2022, when I purchased the bike and brought it back to the UK.
The petrol tank sat on the beach in Dunkirk – a fitting tribute to the lives lost in battle
A true piece of wartime history that took 82 years to return home…
Credits:
Sincere thanks to Christian Rohr for taking the time to photograph his motorcycle, and write the brilliant accompanying article.
Jan Vandevelde WD Motorcycles Register
Jaromír Patočka author of Firma Štěpař, Hanák a spol. a motocykly Ariel v Československu / The company Štěpař, Hanák and Co. and Ariel motorcycles in Czechoslovakia.
Roger Gwynn Ariel Owners Motor Cycle Club / Draganfly Motorcycles
an article by Christian Rohr The Girder Club
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