The First Armored Motorized Military Vehicle
November/December 2001
Konrad F. Schreier, Jr.
The armored steam traction engine for the Fowler armored road
train. Note the crewman inside the armored cab and the winch cable
guide on the lower left side.
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An unarmored commerical Fowler road train of 1899. Note both the
steam traction engine and all three wagons are sprung. This type
was used to haul supplies during the Boer War.
It should surprise nobody that a steam traction engine (steam
tractor) was the basis for the first motorized armored vehicle used
in combat. The first steam tractors had been built in the 1850s,
and, after the American Civil War, their use proliferated.
In the 1870s many of the world's armies experimented with
steam tractors, using them to pull trains of supply wagons. Their
speed was never more than 10 miles per hour, but that was three
times the speed of animal-drawn supply wagons.
The British were among the largest builders and users of steam
traction engines. They found them useful in many places in the
empire, particularly in the vast arid lands such as Africa and
Australia. When the Boer War broke out in 1899 both the British and
the Boers immediately began using available steam tractors. The
British Army immediately bought some for military use and sent them
to South Africa.
These steam tractors were used to haul road trains of supply
wagons to places not served by railroads. Boer troops began
attacking them and the British had to divert troops to defend
them.
In 1899, in cooperation with the British Army, the steam
traction engine builder John Fowler and Company of Leeds, England,
designed and built a special armored steam traction engine road
train for use in South Africa. It was pulled by a 20 HP steam
tractor fitted with an armored shell to protect its crew and
working parts. It weighed some 15 tons complete with armor. The
steam tractor incorporated sprung wheels so it could run as fast as
10 miles per hour on an improved level road and about half that on
a level unimproved road or across level fields. It had no
rough-country, off-road capability. Its operation was limited by
the need to supply it with boiler water and coal fuel.
The Fowler armored road train shipped to South Africa had three
armored and sprung wagons used to carry either troops, cargo or
even artillery up to light six-inch field howitzer. The armor
proved resistant to fire from the Boer's Mauser rifles, and
shrapnel balls and fragments from artillery projectiles.