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Category: Equipment

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Cushman Auto Glide Model 53 Motor Scooter for WW2 Airborne Troops

1944

Military Airborne model 53 introduced - 4,734 sold to US government

Here are a few facts about the Cushman scooter.

Originally the company made engines and decided to build a motor scooter just to have another product to put the engines in. 

The earliest Cushman scooters were sold in 1937 and known as Auto-Glide models. 

The first model was 1-1 for first scooter and first model. The 1-2 was the second model and so forth. The original Auto-Glides sold for $132 to $140. By 1938 Cushman had nine models of scooters.

They continued to build scooters in what they called the twenty series and thirty series until World War II. 

Then all scooter production went to the war effort. Some wartime motor scooters were designed to be dropped from airplanes and they were used for other military duties. 

The 82nd Airborne used many of these in France after D-Day.

 

A Trooper from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne, "somewhere in France", 1944.

 

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Digger History:  an unofficial history of the Australian & New Zealand Armed Forces