White Armoured Car

[David]

The French Government began receiving, in 1915, supplies of trucks built by the White Motor Co. of Cleveland, Ohio and by the end of the same year the first twenty armoured cars were constructed in France on White chassis. The White was a fairly conventional chassis with a 35-h.p. four-cylinder water-cooled engine with drive to the rear wheels, although in the armoured car duplicate steering controls were fitted for driving backwards in emergency. The maximum speed of this 6-ton vehicle was 45km/h and the radius of action was about 250 km.

The normal crew carried was four men and the armament consisted of one 37-mm. gun and one Hotchkiss machinegun, or alternatively machineguns only. The two mountings were on opposite sides of the turret, which was of distinctive design and liberally equipped with observation ports.

By the end of the First World War the French Army had no less than 205 White armoured cars, more than three times the combined total of Renaults and Peugeots. This large supply led France, like Britain, to retain many wartime armoured cars in service after the war and some White armoured cars, modernized in details, like fitting them with modern pneumatic wheels, but still essentially the same in appearance, were in action in the first years of the Second World War. It was also used by the Brazilian Army in the 20-ies.