Putilov-Garford Armoured Car

[David]

The Russian Puilov-Garford was designed in the autumn of 1914 and was for one of the most heavily armed Armoured Cars of the war. The chassis, drive train and motor was based on an American truck, made by the Garford Company of Ohio - hence the name - with a 35-h.p. motor, chain driven on the rear wheels. On it was placed an armoured body with a MG and cannon equipped turret at the rear, and two additional MG:s in sponsons. The turret, facing to the rear with traverse of less than 180 degrees, mounted a short 75­mm. gun with the short barrel protected by a curious channel projecting from the turret face, and to the right of it, a Maxim water-cooled machine-gun. The two sponsons behind the driver's cab, each had a Maxim machine­gun mounted with an arc of fire side­ways and, although limited by the cab, forwards. The armour ranged between 7 mm. and 9mm; the dimensions of the vehicle were about 19 ft long, 7 ft 6 in. wide and 9 ft high. All this added up to a pretty imposing weight of about 11 tons, and it was therefore only useable on good roads, and could not really be used in the terrain. The Putilov-Garford was also hard to maneuver and handicapped by the poorly placed armament. It was still a pretty successful design, with heavy armament impressing both friend and foe alike. (It was, for example, used with effect by the Bolsheviks against the British tanks supplied to the Whites during the Russian Civil War.) And one did go down in history as being the first Russian armoured car to be seen in Teheran, Persia, in 1915.