American Armoured Cars of WW1
Part One:  Davidson-Cadillacs

by Tim Rigsby
 

 

Major (later Colonel) R.P. Davidson, Commandant of the Northwestern Military and Naval Academy at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, was the leading pioneer of armoured fighting vehicles in the United States. 

In 1899, Davidson obtained a standard 6-h.p. Duryea tricar and altered it to take a Colt 7-mm. machine gun complete with its tripod which was affixed to the front platform of the vehicle with its legs straddiling the single front wheel. The gun had a light shield and could be traversed by hand through 180 degrees and also had limited vertical movement.  The range of the gun was 2,000 yards and it could fire 480 rounds per minute, by belt feed.  A crew of four men, in pairs back to back, could be carried on the standard passenger seats which were placed over the engine cover.  The Duryea tricar had a three-cylinder engine and weighed 900 lbs without, and 1000 lbs with the gun.   A rope was carried on the vehicle so that the engine could be used as a winch to haul the vehicle out of mud so long as there was a handy tree or fence, etc., to take the rope.  When fully loaded, the vehicle could carry tents for the men and 5000 rounds of ammunition.  Davidson envisioned using the Tricar as the main vehicle of a flying artillery patrol with an escort of armed cyclists.  In 1900, Davidson produced an almost exactly similar vehicle, this time based on a Duryea quadracycle, which was basically the same design as the Tricar, except that it had two front wheels instead of one.

In the Summer of 1900, Davidson took this car from Fort Sheridan, Illinois, to Washington, with a crew of academy cadets.  There to deliver a message from his local commander to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General Nelson A. Miles.  This very convincing display of the military value of fast (for its day) motor transport impressed General Miles and as a result he later in 1903 suggested to the Secretary of State for War that five existing Cavalry regiments should be equipped with Davidson's cars as an automobile corps for patrol, reconnaissance, road marking and military survey. However, nothing came of the far sided idea.  It was many years before any nation organized this type of force.

Though the Military authorities did not appreciate the full potential of Davidson's or General Miles' ideas, Davidson himself carried on his pioneering work in the use of mechanical transport at the Northwestern Military Academy.  Davidson formed a new machine gun patrol in 1902.  This time using the Colt machine gun mounted on two steam cars built by the cadets under his command.  The steam car formed a more sturdy carriage than the quadracycle.  The first vehicle was demonstrated at a motor show held in St. Louis.  But still the U.S. War Department showed no interest in this kind of equipment.  Davidson continued to refine his original ideas.  In 1909, he purchased a new Cadillac and fitted it with a Colt machine gun on a tripod mount to make yet another machine gun car. ( along with the McLean automatic 37mm gun mounted on a truck, and the Packard and Freyer-Miller trucks mounting Driggs Schroeder one pounder guns, a concept devised by Captain (later General) J.H. Sherburne of the Massachusetts Militia , all of these vehicles were used during the 1909 Army manoeuvers)

Like some Military men of other nations, Davidson had realized early on that operations on land were now facing the threat of observation, if not attack, from the air.  The observation balloon and airship had been perfected, and Davidson was one of the first to appreciate that a gun mounted on a fast car was a quick way of catching up with and eliminating any intruders in the sky.

In 1910, Davidson bought two more Cadillacs and converted them into balloon destroyers.  Both carried two Colt machine guns, one with a shield was on the scuttle and the other was at the rear.  To demonstrate the mobility of these Balloon destroyers, Davidson entered both of them in the famous Glidden Tour of 1910 (a severely long distance run from Cleveland to Chicago via Mississippi and Texas) only 9 out of the 38 cars finished, among them were the two Balloon destoyers which had been crewed by Davidson's cadets. Also in 1910 Ehrhardt submitted there semi-armoured car BAK as well as a design by Major Hugh Gallagher of the Army, he designed and built a personnel carrier on a White 2 ton commercial truck. It had side mounted seats facing outward to carry a section of two squads totalling 16 men plus the section leader. Neither was taken up do to the lack of funds.

Two further Cadillac chassis were fitted with Colt guns in 1911 and 1912:  these were equipped with both wireless and a powerful coaxial searchlight which also was fitted with a heliograph shutter and  radio equipment. A telescopic mast as well as small balloons were provided for antennae.The generator for the radio set was coupled with the development of the Delco electrical starting and lighting system for automobiles. Following exhibition of one of these cars in New York, an order for four similar vehicles was placed by the Guatemalan Government and was carried out by the Cadillac Motor Car Company. The two cars were accompanied to Guatemala by an assistant to Colonel Davidson who remained for several months as an instructor. He was required to remove essential parts each night and carry them to a labyrinth strong room under the watchful eye of a huge Indian General, Each morning Davidsons assistant would pick the part up, and reinstall it. None of these early cars was armoured except for armourd shields on the machine-guns. Davidson meanwhile built a reconnaissance car which included a dictaphone and maps on rollers, a hospital car with stretchers and X-ray equipment, a field kitchen with an electric cooker powered by an engine operated generator.  It was natural though that Davidson should eventually turn his attention to a fully armoured car and one was included in the five military automobiles he designed in 1915.

This car like most of his earlier experimental vehicles was a Cadillac, a make which was already establishing its reputation for high quality and which became widely used in the United States Army in the First World War.

The 1915 Davidson-Cadillac Armoured Car - which had the distinction of being the first fully armoured motor vehicle to be built in the U.S.A. - was similar in layout to some of the early Royal Navy Air Service armoured cars built in October 1914.  Armoured all round with controllable radiator doors, the rear part had an open top, where the Colt machine-gun with an armoured shield was mounted just behind armoured head cover for the driver.  The Cadillac was a much better designed vehicle than the R.N.A.S. cars, however, (there was, of course, less urgency involved) with a lower centre of gravity and although only, like them, a conventional passenger car chassis with drive to the rear wheels, had a better cross-country performance.

The armoured car, with Colonel Davidson's other vehicles, was driven long distances by cadets of the Academy in a 1915 exercise and later in the year was tried out in U.S. Army manoeuvres.  It failed to arouse much interest in the potentialities of armoured cars and official encouragement of this weapon during the First World War period was only sporadic. The Armoured Car's was used by the academy until 1927, and one is preserved in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.