In 1913, the U.S. Army started using Hendee (not yet called Indian) bikes, the same year co-founder Oscar Hedstrom resigned from the company. The world entered its first war in July 1914. Hendee left as general manager in 1915 but remained as president. The United States entered WWI in April 1917, and the company immediately began diverting production toward the war effort. Between 1917 and 1919, it built almost 50,000 motorcycles for the Army.
In 1923, the name was finally changed to The Indian Motocycle Company (notice the missing “r”). Fifteen years later in 1930, Eleuthère Paul du Pont — business magnate and founder of Du Pont Motors — purchased enough shares in the company to force existing management out. He subsequently puts his own man, Loring F. Hosley, in charge, who in turn grows the company exponentially. Between 1940 and 1945 (the World War II years), production again shifted entirely to the war effort, and Indian made some 35,000 bikes (equating to $24 million worth of inventory) for the military.
In 1950, Ralph B. Rogers resigned as president of Indian Motorcycle and was summarily replaced by John Brockhouse, a third-generation English industrialist whose family was into forging springs, axles, and other ironworks. Three short years later, in 1953, the company shut down entirely and remained shuttered for the next two years. Brockhouse Engineering bought the rights to the company in 1955 and, oddly, started importing Royal Enfield motorcycles (which has a crazy history of its own), rebranded them, and sold them as Indian Motorcycles.
[Featured image by AlfvanBeem via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 1.0]
