The British Armoured Car Expeditionary Force (ACEF) was a British military unit sent to Russia during the First World War. It fought alongside the Russian Empire on the Eastern Front between June 1916 and 1918. The unit consisted of 566 men. [1]
British Armoured Car Expeditionary Forces | |
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Active | 1916-1918 |
Country | British Empire |
By the end of 1915, trench warfare on the Western Front meant that there was no scope for armoured cars to be stationed there. Three squadrons of armoured cars built by the Royal Naval Air Service were supposed to be sent by ship to Archangel in Russia to fight on the Eastern Front alongside Russia. [2] However, sea ice prevented them from reaching Archangel, so the unit ended up at Alexandrovsk instead. [3] The ACEF fought alongside the Imperial Russian Army in Galicia, Romania and the Caucasus Mountains until the Bolshevik coup of 1917, when the ACEF was withdrawn from Russia. [4] [5]
A military armoredcar is a lightweight wheeled armored fighting vehicle, historically employed for reconnaissance, internal security, armed escort, and other subordinate battlefield tasks. With the gradual decline of mounted cavalry, armored cars were developed for carrying out duties used to be assigned to light cavalry. Following the invention of the tank, the armored car remained popular due to its faster speed, comparatively simplified maintenance and low production cost. It also found favor with several colonial armies as a cheaper weapon for use in underdeveloped regions. During World War II, most armored cars were engineered for reconnaissance and passive observation, while others were devoted to communications tasks. Some equipped with heavier armament could even substitute for tracked combat vehicles in favorable conditions—such as pursuit or flanking maneuvers during the North African Campaign.
The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form the Royal Air Force (RAF), the world's first independent air force.
Lord Strathcona's Horse (LdSH[RC]) is a regular armoured regiment of the Canadian Army. Currently based in Edmonton, Alberta, the regiment is part of 3rd Canadian Division's 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group. Members of the regiment are commonly called Strathconas or Strats as a short form. It was one of the last regiments in the British Empire to be created and raised by a private individual, Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal.
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The Derbyshire Yeomanry was a yeomanry regiment of the British Army, first raised in 1794, which served as a cavalry regiment and dismounted infantry regiment in the First World War and provided two reconnaissance regiments in the Second World War, before being amalgamated with the Leicestershire Yeomanry to form the Leicestershire and Derbyshire Yeomanry in 1957.
Commander Oliver Stillingfleet Locker-Lampson, CMG, DSO was a British politician and naval officer. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Ramsey, Huntingdonshire and Birmingham Handsworth from 1910 to 1945 as a Conservative.
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The Lothians and Border Horse was a Yeomanry regiment, part of the British Territorial Army. It was ranked 36th in the Yeomanry order of precedence and was based in the Scottish Lowland area, recruiting in the Lothians – East Lothian (Haddingtonshire), Midlothian (Edinburghshire), and West Lothian (Linlithgowshire) – and along the border with England, particularly Berwickshire. It amalgamated with the Lanarkshire Yeomanry and the Queen's Own Royal Glasgow Yeomanry to form the Queen's Own Lowland Yeomanry in 1956.
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