Landships II

This isn't a 'new' Skoda pic is it?



Tread.

Treadhead wrote:

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Howdy Fellas,

Can any of you kind buggers identify this particular rig for me?


This is a possibility: A Pierce-Arrow armoured car as used by the British Armoured Car Force in Russia. B.T. White says, "In one car at least the weight was reduced by the turret being removed and replaced by a 3-pdr on an open mounting with a flat shield. The gaps in the side left by removal of the turret were filled in with flat steel plates"

Some shots of the Pierce-Arrow show that the rear was the rounded shape seen in the photo. The pics themselves seems to have been taken in a military establishment - in the top one that looks like a rifle range in the background, alarmingly close to the neighbours. The houses look distinctly northern European, if not English, so maybe it's a Pierce-Arrow on its return from Russia. Can't make out the flag in the second pic. I'm going to tinker with the photo, but it might be the White Ensign.

Incidentally, Treaders, in England we don't refer to each other constantly as "buggers". We do use the expression sometimes, but not as often as American sitcoms would have you believe.

P.S. Have mucked about with the image. I thought the dark area of the flag might be the Union Flag part of the White Ensign, but it looks like an optical illusion. The quality of the photo isn't good enough to identify it. At least, I can't. Where did you find the pic, Treaders?

-- Edited by James H at 12:49, 2007-02-08

I'm fairly certain that it's the estonian improvised armoured car "Estonia", built in 1918 and used against russian forces in 1919.

-- Edited by Kaiser at 13:26, 2007-02-08

It was many years ago that I read about the estonian armoured cars during the war of independence. It was on a swedish site, I think. I'll try to find it and let you know.

Good heavens. Well, the bottom one is a Lancia, and it's outside a trattoria, so I wouldn't have thought so.

The stuff in the top one looks as if it belonged to Al Capone.

Thx....

lostiznaos seems to be right on this one. Florida State Uni has got these down as Czech from the 20's. It seems they also had some Lancia A/Cs at the same time, so those Italian looking uniforms outside the trattoria might be Czech.

Yep, that was indeed a brilliant site, made by Thorleiff Ohlsen from Sweden. I was lucky enough to have downloaded some of his info at the time. There hasn't been any website or book since that time, covering all the Baltic States in that period.
There are only a few books on the subject, and these are hard or impossible to find. Just after the Baltic independence of 1991, the book "Latvijas Armijas" appeared in Riga which has some photo's of Latvian MK-V's and Fiat 3000's. In Lithuania, in the same period, a small book was published on the takeover of Vilnius by the Lithuanians after the Soviets conquered it on the Poles in 1939 (they handed the city over to the Lithuanians, only after extensive systematical looting), entitled "Vilniaus - Istorijos Atkarpa" by Regina Zepkaite. The only vehicles shown on the few photo's are Vickers Carden Lloyd light tanks.
A more interesting book was written on the Estonian AFV's, although fully in Estonian. I've attached a scan of the book itself. The ISBN nr is 9985-60-692-2, published by Tammiskilp in Tallinn in 1999. The photographic info is great; from the improvised AC's of 1918/19, to the captured Russian AC's, to the Mark V's and Renault FT-17s and the purchased British Arsenal-Grossleys and Polish TKS tankettes. Truly recommended!

all the best,
Michel.