Charles Samson's 'Silver Ghost', 1914
Samson's Silver Ghost armed with a single rear facing .303 Maxim gun, August 1914. (1)
An improvised Rolls-Royce “Silver Ghost” armed with a Maxim machine gun, used to rescue downed air crew, Dunkirk, France, August 1914. 2 of the 60 horsepower vehicles were converted in this way by the Eastchurch Squadron of the British Royal Naval Air Service at Ostend under the command of Wing Commander Charles Rumney Samson, who used his own vehicles. The 2 Silver Ghost's used by Samson's unit were originally unarmoured but boiler plates from Air Service field kitchens of approximately 10-15MM thick were used to provide protection later in their use by the RNAS unit.
The resounding success of the converted Silver Ghost as a recon/spotting vehicle and it's work in retrieving downed airmen meant that by October of 1914 other Rolls-Royce 'Silver Ghosts' elsewhere in the British military were similarly converted, before the eventual adoption of a new version of the vehicle that had standardised armour and a rotating turret armed with a single water cooled .303 Vickers gun under the name of the 'Armoured Car 1914 Pattern.' This standardised version had totally replaced the converted civilian versions in new production vehicles by September/October 1914.
These later, fully adopted/standardised versions of armoured Rolls-Royce would go on to be very successful, particularly during the Middle Eastern fronts including Syria-Palestine, in Aden, Iraq, and Iran, under T.E. Lawrence, who obtained 9 vehicles from the RNAS after August of 1915, as well as seeing post-WW1 service in India, Egypt, Iraq and Ireland, with a small number still in service in WW2 where they were used in 1941 against the Italians in the African campaign. The Irish example is notable in that the vehicle, is still in ceremonial and parade use by the Irish Defence Force and retains a working .303 Vickers gun and drive system. (2)
T.E Lawrence’s desert raiding machines comprised nine Rolls Royce 40/50 Silver Ghost motorcars, including a personal vehicle he named the Blue Mist.
On September 16, 1917, Lawrence and a small team set out to demolish a railway bridge south of Amman, in what is now Jordan. The Blue Mist was “crammed to the gunwale” with explosives and detonators. While his companions, who had followed in another tender, engaged the Turkish post guarding the bridge in a brief but ferocious firefight, Lawrence coolly placed 150 pounds of charges in the bridge’s support spans, ignoring desperate signals from the two British officers supervising the cover fire that Turkish reinforcements were on the way. The explosion sent twisted shards of the bridge plunging into the ravine below, and further enraged the pursuing Turks.
And at that moment, as the group raced away from the rising smoke, one of the Blue Mist’s rear spring brackets snapped, dropping the body onto the tire and instantly halting forward progress. It was, as Lawrence later described it, the first and only time a Rolls let him down in the desert. Anyone else would have simply abandoned the car, but Lawrence was loath to lose not only his faithful Blue Mist (“A Rolls in the desert was above rubies,” he wrote), but the extensive explosives kit inside. With the Turks perhaps ten minutes away, he and his driver (who was nicknamed “Rolls”) jacked up the car, and untied a length of wood plank kept with each car for deep sand recovery, with the idea of wedging it between the axle and chassis. It was too long, and “Rolls” estimated they’d need three thicknesses of the wood to support the car. They had no saw, but Lawrence solved the problem by simply shooting crosswise with his pistol through the plank several times in two places, until the board broke in three pieces. The Turks heard the firing and paused their pursuit, which lent Lawrence and “Rolls” time to rope the planks in place, using the running board as a mounting point, and make good their escape.
Lawrence wrote: “So enduring was the running board that we did the ordinary work with the car for the next three weeks, and took her so into Damascus at the end. Great was Rolls, and great was Royce! They were worth hundreds of men to us in these deserts.”
Photo of the 'Irish Sliabh no mBan', the only remaining fully operational Rolls-Royce armoured car.
1- https://autoweek.com/article/car-life/armored-rolls-royce-ghosts-ruled-deserts-arabia-chariots-war