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Rolls-Royce Armoured Car: Admiralty Turreted Pattern

The Rolls-Royce 1914 Admiralty turreted pattern armoured car needs little description: its basic layout with a central driver’s and fighting compartment topped by a revolving turret and and open platform behind was used for other types of British armoured cars right up to the Second World War. The crew was normally three men; the driver sitting on the floor on a cushion and, in action, the other two standing to serve the Vickers machine-gun mounted in the turret. Space was limited inside the car, however, and for this reason sometimes the crew was only two, in which case the driver fed the machine-gun, when driving, with one hand.

There were a few modifications and variants of the basic type. One experimental car had the turret removed and a 1-pdr automatic gun ("pom pom") fitted on an open mounting. Minor modifications were also made on the cars according to their own theatres of war. For example, T E Lawrence’s cars all had double wheels front and rear to cope with the extremely rough desert terrain. They also removed the roof plates so that the conditions inside would be made more bearable. Other modifications were made for different fighting zones such as the addition of an extra commander’s cupola on the turret roof. For engaging and pulling away barbed wire entanglements, some cars in France had a pivoted hook fitted at the front; this idea apparently originated at Gallipoli, where Turkish trenches were attacked in this way. Other than this no other major modifications were made right up to 1920 when new plans were drawn up for a totally improved armoured car. It turned out however that the so-called improvement was almost identical to the old 1914 pattern save an extra inch to the turret height, louvres on the hatches in front of the radiator plus the replacement of the spoked wheels with disc wheels.
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