ROYAL NAVAL AIR SERVICE ARMOURED CAR SECTION IN WW1

[sommewalker]

Little is known about the ROYAL NAVAL AIR SERVICE in ww1

in comparison to other services,

and with that in mind I have included 9 photos starting with a sopwith tabloid ,

with floats,

then one print of an armoured car in Gallipoli

then some in Ireland ,

one of them with a squadron mascot,

and 1 of a model I made ,

and finally 2 pages from a magazine produced at Wembley,

when they were engaged with experimental works .

The RNAS engaged in interservice rivalry on land as well as in the air, possessing for a time the UK's only mechanised land forces in the form of the RNAS Armoured Car Section made up of squadrons of Rolls-Royce Armoured Cars. Commanded by Commander Charles Samson, the section was originally equipped with unarmoured touring cars and intended to provide line of communications security and to pick up aircrew who had been forced to land in hostile territory. Samson saw the possibilities when he armed one vehicle with a Maxim gun and ambushed a German car near Cassel on 4 September 1914. He then had a shipbuilders in Dunkirk add boilerplate to his Rolls Royce and Mercedes vehicles. The new armoured car squadrons were soon used to great effect forming part of Naval mechanised raiding columns against the Germans. By November 1914 the Section had become the Royal Naval Armoured Car Division (RNACD) eventually expanding to 20 squadrons. As trench warfare developed, the armoured cars could no longer operate on the Western Front and were redeployed to other theatres including the Middle East, Romania and Russia. In the summer of 1915 the RNACD was disbanded and the army took over control of armoured cars, with the units soon coming under the command of the Motor Branch of the Machine Gun Corps.

However RNAS experience of the Western Front would not be lost, No. 20 Squadron RNAS was retained under Naval control to further develop armoured vehicles for land battle, these personnel later becoming the nucleus of the team working under the Landships Committee that developed the first tanks

[Kenny Andrew]

interesting Peter the forerunners of the armoured divisons , I like the model you made ,what scale is it ?