In 2010 these remains of a KM21 were on Ebay Germany. The thing that immediately took our attention was the brass plate on the toolbox which indicated that it once belonged to the Dutch army. So it looked a very interesting machine with hopefully some Dutch history and it would be great to bring it back to Holland. To our surprise we had the winning bid and the bike was quickly collected in Germany near the Tsjech border.
The brass plate is in the Dutch language and at the bottom it says: Eigenaar : DvD (Eigenaar is dutch for owner). We think that DvD stand for “Departement van Defensie” but not sure. But similar plate with these owner exist so it must be Dutch army for sure.
It still had its original engine fitted but strangely it had some unusual features which were not standard BSA. One was a large steel timing plug in the timing cover instead of the usual aluminum one, and it also had a different oilsump cover, milled out of solid steel instead of the usual pressed one. Another strange feature was a nicely machined plate on the magneto platform, probably there to fit a bosch magneto. These features look professionally made which makes us think they were made by the German army after the bike was put in in their service when they captured it in may 1940.
