Rolls-Royce 1920 Mk.Ia

	THE ROLLS-ROYCE ARMORED CARS
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Author Jon Lopez (modified and translated from the original in Fine Scale Modeler)

The Belgians were the first to use armored cars in World War One when they fitted Standard Rolls-Royce touring cars (Silver Ghosts) with steel boiler plates on the front and sides as protection against small-caliber weapons. They also equipped these vehicles with Maxim, then Vickers, .303 machine guns.

The Belgians’ success prompted the Royal Navy to outfit several cars. The Royal Naval Armored Car Division, formed in 1914, under the command of Commander E.L. Boothby, comprised fifteen squadrons, each with twelve cars. One squadron was sent to the East coast of England to guard against invasion, one to Russia , and two to Gallipoli. After a short and ineffective stay there, they were transferred to Egypt for defense of the Suez Canal .

The armored cars were to act in concert with reconnaissance aircraft to rescue downed pilots. However, the cars proved too slow and the road conditions too primitive to be successful in the Western Front.

Because of their weight the cars were ungainly and unwieldy in certain types of terrain such as German South West Africa , where the cars literally had to be jacked up and carried by hand to solid ground.

In 1915 the R.N.A.C. was disbanded and the cars became part of the British Army’s Light Armored Motor Batteries of the Motor Machine Gun Corps. Units in this corps were made up of four or eight armored cars, their supply tenders and lorries. They operated independently in Egypt , Syria , Palestine , Persia and Mesopotamia . The British Army chose not to keep the armored cars of others manufacturers, preferring the Rolls-Royce because its performance and dependability.

Colonel E.T. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) used the Light Armored Batteries against the Turks in Palestine . He mentions the “Blue Mist”, a 1913 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, which was an armor-sided tender. Many of the armored cars were given names by their crews such as “Wedding Bells” and “Cockatrice”.

The Rolls-Royce 1920 Pattern Mark IA, like the 1914 pattern vehicle, was based on the Silver Ghost. A machine gun was mounted in a revolving turret on what was basically a standard Silver Ghost chassis. A heavier leaf-suspension and dual rear wheels supported the 3,5 ton. Vehicle. The interior consisted of a wood floor and bench seats.

The Rolls-Royce had rear-wheel drive unlike Austin and Peerless armored cars. The 1920 car had improvements over the earlier version, including a self-starter, larger radiator, louvered radiator doors, and engine improvements. No form of a synchro-mesh was available to aid in shifting gears, so considerable driver skill was required. The tires were often filled with semisolid material to counter having the tires shot out.

Rolls-Royce armored cars saw service in Russia and were used by the British for crowd control in Ireland , Iraq , India , Shanghai and Palestine . Following one incident where an armored car was overturned and set on fire, some cars were modified to allow the armor plate to be electrified. Even so, the vehicles proved unsuitable for riot control.