Armoured car

The first armed cars were built around the turn of the twentieth century, and in 1914 the Belgians used armoured Minerva cars in combat. In autumn 1914 the Royal Naval Air Service requisitioned Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost chassis and fitted them with armoured bodies, a turret and a Vickers machine gun; about 120 were built during the war. The Russian, French, German and Austro-Hungarian armies also had armoured cars. Their armour protected only against rifle bullets and splinters.

Trenches, craters and wire soon made them irrelevant on the Western Front, but in open country they remained valuable. In Egypt in March 1916 the Duke of Westminster's armoured cars routed the Senussi and freed the prisoners from the sunken ship Tara, and T. E. Lawrence called his Rolls-Royces "more valuable than rubies". In Mesopotamia and Palestine in 1917–1918 they pursued retreating Turkish troops. They were particularly useful on the Eastern Front, and in the Russian Civil War and the Polish-Soviet War they became a common weapon.