World’s First Armoured Personnel Carrier Daimler-Guinness ‘Boilers’ 1916 | Season 3 – Episode 40
Wheels Mar 18, 2024
At noon on Easter Monday, April 24th 1916, in front of Dublin’s General Post Office on Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), Patrick H. Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic (Forógra na Poblachta) for the first time proclaiming a Republic and the formation of a Provisional Government with the goal of liberating the nation from the colonial rule of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Within hours of the reading of the proclamation Dublin city was engulfed in fierce street battles between volunteers, of the newly formed Army of the Irish Republic and the standing British army.
On Easter Monday across the island of Ireland and particularly in Dublin city, the British forces quickly found themselves thrust into a type of warfare they were unprepared for. It was a brutal, intense and arduous form of urban combat, characterised by guerrilla tactics employed by volunteers intimately familiar with the streets of Dublin city, troop loses were high and climbing.
By late evening on Monday 24th the senior command of the British forces was recognising the vulnerability of their troops being transported through Dublin in open trucks, particularly when subjected to enemy sniper fire or bomb attacks from volunteers positioned on rooftops.
With necessity proving to be the mother of invention, Colonel Bertram Portal based at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare came up with an effective solution to General John Maxwell – to armour plate several trucks.
His idea was to bolt locomotive smokeboxes onto the rear of flatbed delivery lorries and to also enclose the drivers compartment fully with steel plate. Being fully enclosed by steel plate allows these vehicles to lay claim to being the world’s first Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs).
While the idea to armour, trucks was relatively simple in engineering terms, the biggest problem was a lack of suitable trucks as most of the British army equipment was deployed at that time to France for the war effort and so Colonel Portal made the decision to requisition vehicles from commercial companies.
The Guinness Brewery at St James Gate had a large, motorised delivery fleet and British Army Ordnance quickly took stock of what was available in their garages and requisitioned (without offering payment) several vehicles including motor cars, steam wagons and motor lorries. In the coming days they returned to Guinness and requisitioned several of their ships.
Colonel Portal then brought five Daimler Marienfelde (Marienfelde was the location of the Daimler factory) flatbed delivery trucks to the Inchicore Works of the Great Southern and Western Railway (GS&WR), where he then requisitioned at least ten locomotive “smokeboxes” to make up the armoured cars.
In devising his APC concept, Colonel Portal chose steam locomotive smoke boxes and not just because of their steel (bullet-proof) construction but also as they could be used as modules and joined together into a single unit to accommodate 15 – 20 soldiers and their equipment.
Between late evening on Monday 24th and early morning on Wednesday 26th April and under the direction of British Army Ordnance officers, civilian Works employees, chiefly Boilermakers, constructed several armoured vehicles.
The design of the Daimler-Guinness APCs was to bolt locomotive smoke boxes to the rear of the flatbed trucks. The smoke boxes, large steel cylinders riveted together, were positioned at the front of steam train locomotives. Their primary function was to facilitate the emission of hot gases into the atmosphere through a short chimney stack. The majority of the smoke boxes were equipped with round hatches situated towards the front of the steam locomotive to provide a maintenance entry point.
For the APC body, up to three smoke boxes were bolted to the flatbed with the unit containing the outward opening door located at the rear over a narrow platform, that was the original bed of the truck. The roof holes for the chimney stack of each smokebox were sealed with steel plates. Dummy rifle slits were also added to confuse snipers and the trucks were quickly given the nickname; “boilers”.
Four separate smokeboxes bolted together on the rear of a lorry made one compartment into which could be squeezed at least fifteen fully-equipped soldiers. while the rearmost section was faced backwards allowing access through a retained engine hatch.
Aside from their APC role the ‘boilers’ also performed as scout-car, gun-truck (allowing broadside shooting at volunteer positions), artillery tractor and the general transport of military goods.
According to research and an eye-witness account from Volunteer Joseph Sweeney (a sniper on the GPO’s roof), compiled by the Tank-Encyclopaedia.com the APC first saw action on Wednesday night 26th April 1916, when a Daimler-Guinness was supporting the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment….in order to reassess rebel strength, the vehicle turned onto Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), and stopped in front of the Gresham Hotel…Volunteers Sweeney, Reilly, and three other rebel snipers fired at the vehicle with rifles and all of their bullets ricocheted….The Volunteers then decided to fire at the driver’s slits with the aim of killing the driver in order to disable the vehicle. Between three and five shots were fired by Sweeney, and the vehicle stopped….The vehicle then attempted a restart, but it failed, and lay motionless until later that night. Once dark enough, and when all the lights were all out, it was towed away, reportedly by another Daimler-Guinness.”
Today there is almost no documentary evidence of the Daimler-Guinness ‘Boilers’, save for a few surviving photographs and a 2016 search of Inchicore Works archival records which revealed a “June 30th 1916 Works Order A. 282 for the Military Account, War Office for “Armouring Motor Cars £365.”
According to Diarmaid Ferriter, Professor of Modern Irish History, University College Dublin. “The 1916 Rising was the first major revolt against British rule in Ireland since the United Irishmen Rebellion of 1798.
During Easter Week 1916, the rebels succeeded in taking over large parts of Dublin city for almost a week, right under the noses of the British empire, then the largest empire in the world. For fewer than 2,000 poorly armed amateur soldiers to take on a country with the political power and military strength of Britain was astonishing.
… The 1916 Rising came to be seen as the first stage in a war of independence that resulted in the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 and, ultimately, the formal declaration of an Irish Republic in 1949.”
Information sources:
‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ – Plato
Ansionnachifionn.com
AVF (Armoured Fighting Vehicle) News
British Use of Armoured Vehicles During the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Ireland – AFV News
Getty Images
Gov.ie
Guinness Archives
Hutton Archive
Independent.ie
Militaryarchives.ie
Mirrorpix
National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
PA/PA Wire
Pathe News
Sinn Fein Bookshop
Tanks-Encyclopedia.com
Topical Press Agency
Trinity College
In light of this episode’s controversial subject matter, the author acknowledges that there are certain details that remain unverified or unproven to them.
