Landships II

You're in luck - there's an article about it on the main Landships site:
http://www.landships.freeservers.com/new_pages/jeffrey_ac_no1_info.htm

Roger,

I thought it looked familiar.  I should have checked Landships first.  Thanks for the heads up.

MarkV

Roger Todd wrote:

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You're in luck - there's an article about it on the main Landships site:
http://www.landships.freeservers.com/new_pages/jeffrey_ac_no1_info.htm

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 This link no longer works but I would like to see the article - has it been reposted please?

Many thanks Charlie, just what I wanted.

 

Regards

 

Mike

Thanks Steve. FWIW, my notes on the armoured cars culled from the various sources quoted:

Armoured Cars
As early as 1903 Commanding General of the Army Nelson A Miles, so impressed with the performance of two steam cars, had, on the eve of his retirement, recommended that five of the fifteen cavalry regiments be converted to an automobile corps. Needless to say nothing happened. It was not until 1916 that the first motorisation in the US Army took place.

According to Crow it was Col R P Davidson, Illinois National Guard, who first designed a partially armoured car in 1898 and continued his development work. In 1915 he produced the first true armoured car in the US it was based on his design that, in 1916, two ‘Regular Army units (sic) were formed for duty on the Mexican border’. One was equipped with armoured Jeffery Quad trucks designated Armored (sic) Cars No 1. The other with White trucks was designated Armored Cars No 2. Both units also had motor-cycles mounted with machine guns.

Alternatively, Fides and Kempf say that it was in 1914 that Jerry De Cou, a factory superintendent at the Thomas B Jeffery Co, designed and built an armoured car on the Jeffery-Quad chassis. Following this, two other different types of armoured cars were made, with armour provided by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation.
One of the three types had an octagonal central superstructure (with large opening flaps for weapons) and enclosed wheels; another had a comparatively low flat-topped hull with a circular revolving turret and the third type, known as Armored Car No 1 M1915 to the US Ordnance Corps, had a tall hull surmounted by a turret in the centre, with a second turret stepped down lower at the rear.

The second car above and possibly also the third type was used by the US Army on the Mexican border in 1916 during the rising by Pancho Villa. Crew 4-5; Estimated dimensions (of a later model) 18ft L x 6ft 4in W x 8ft H; Estimated speed 20 mph top speed, 12 mph cruising; rivets spaced at 4 inches on centre; armour plate ranged from .15 inch (3.8 mm) to .2 inch (5.1 mm) in thickness and could stop a 30.06 calibre jacketed bullet at all but near point-blank range; equipped with two manually operated turrets; Armament .30 calibre light machine guns, either four Benet-Mercier MGs (Fides & Kempf) or 1 Bennett-Mercier and 2 Colt Potato Digger (Haugh) or four Benet-Mercier and an additional two in reserve (War Wheels).

Physical Data: Weight empty (est) 11800 lb (5357 kg); Weight loaded 12600 lb (5720 kg); Length (OA) 216 in (5486 mm); Width (est) 76 in (1930 mm); Height (est) 96 in (2438 mm); Ground clr (est) 16 in (406 mm); Wheel base 124 in (3150 mm); Wheel tread (est) 70 in (1778 mm); Drive 4x4.

Photos shows a replica Jeffrey at the Pancho Villa State Park, New Mexico, which used a real Jeffery running gear, with the rest new work in steel. The replica was built by volunteers and staff at the Park.

Two National Guard (NG) units serving on the border also formed armoured units. The New York National Guard had the 1st Armored Motor battery, which had three armoured cars, staff cars and motor-cycle mounted machine guns. The Michigan NG had an improvised Reo armoured car.

There are photos of both the White Armored Motor Car No. 2 and the Jeffery Armored Motor Car No. 1 in the US Army Signal Corps collection at NARA II. I've posted a couple here. I have not found photos of the National Guard armored cars while in Texas in 1916 at NARA (or anywhere else).

 

There is a full scale replica of the Jeffery at the Pancho Villa museum in Columbus, NM. The National Armor and Cavalry Museum at Fort Benning finished restoring the White Armored Motor Car No. 1 in November of this year. There are an excellent selection of photos of the restoration on the NACM Facebook page.

 

I have never seen any evidence that any of the armored cars saw any fighting, or that any of them traveled south of the Texas border (The NG was forbidden from doing so.) They were mainly used to patrol some of the border tons to prevent another raid like the one against Columbus NM. The White and he Jeffery seem to have deployed mainly around El Paso.

-- Edited by Steve Zaloga on Tuesday 27th of December 2016 10:32:41 PM

Sorntec, that would great.