American Armoured Cars on the Western Front

[armchairgeneral]

I am trying to find out if the American army used any armoured cars on the Western Front? Purchased from France maybe? I haven’t found anything on this so I assume not?

[von Lucky]

Give me this weekend to have a deeper look, but I think they might've had the White Armoured Car:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_armored_car

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0vhyQjYMZaA/S2du4YcrT-I/AAAAAAAAEgo/ZRE6aTuvV0w/s1600-h/White+AEF+4x2+Armored+Car.jpg

There was of course a few missed opportunities of sending over more (1st Armored Car Squadron, etc).

[tin shed gamer]

Your right Karsten,Its a wierd thing about the war,they had a couple of good armoured car designs,that they don't seem to have made much use of outside of the USA.What makes it wierd is they actually sold a large number of armoured cars to the British Army via Canada,The Russell armoured car,(its on my to do list) I'm not sure what its other name was something Quad?,As I'm no where near my note books and I've had a sleep since then.
It was used mainly in India during the war,and Then they were sold at auction in the mid twenties ,Which makes it a good car for petty warlords in a BoB games.

[tin shed gamer]

 jeffreys quad!.If your only doing the western/ northern theatre then your really looking at Ft 17's ,as armoured cars were frowned upon by the higher command.But it you wander off to support the Americans in Italy then they did use the Italian Lz's in combat.

[carlos marighela]

IIRC no. They used British MkVs and FT-17s in France.  There's a rather good book on the subject called 'Treat 'em Rough', it's a history of US armour during the Great War.

The only North Americans to make any real use of armoured cars on the Western Front were the Canadians who had an armoured machine gun brigade. They saw a bit of action in the closing stages of the war and also as semi mobile pillboxes during the German March Offensive I believe.

The lack of use of armoured cars by the Yanks isn't terribly surprising. They saw very little use on the Western Front by anyone else between early 1915 and mid/late 1918. The going wasn't really conducive.

[armchairgeneral]

Thanks for your replies gentlemen.

My understanding is the AEF received the White Armoured Car AEF (numbers unknown) on the Western Front but they passed it on to the French fairly soon after.

I can't find any references to them using Italian armoured cars at all.

[tin shed gamer]

 The Lancia IZM's,US forces trained on them and used them on recce's.
There photographs of American troops in the late war showing a mock Whites mk2 being used to mark a dummy HQ.
Which implies that the germans were familiar with it in American use or there would be very little point making a mock up of a car nobody used.Who's going to fall for a fake position,manned by vehicles that aren't in theatre.The Germans were pritty familiar with who was using what and how,by the end of the war.