Ehrhardt series of armoured vehicles

EHRHARDT

SERIES OF ARMOURED VEHICLES

The development of German armoured Cars began in 1906 with the Ehrhardt BAK (Ballon Abwehr Kanone), actually an armoured anti-aircraft platform. But there was little interest despite Ehrhardt having a single armoured car tested in the United States, and by the outbreak of World War One Germany had no armoured vehicles of consequence. When, in the early months of the conflict, they encountered both Belgian and British Armoured Cars, they were impressed. As a result, in October 1914, the German High Command ordered the construction of Armoured Cars. Three firms competed for the design, that were all first rolled out in July 1915. Daimler made one (The Daimler/15), Büssig made one (the A5P) and the automobile firm of Ehrhardt in Düsseldorf made one, the Ehrhardt E-V/4. All designs were pretty similar: heavy, squat four-wheel vehicles. By then the Trench stalemate in the West had set in, and the German High Command started to lose interest in this sort of weapon as they were pretty useless for that type of Warfare. However, in the autumn of 1916 the three vehicles were formed into a unit called Panzerkraftwagen MG-Zug 1 and sent first to the Alsace and then Romanian fronts. There they met with considerable sucess, and in late 1916 more armoured cars of the Ehrhardt type were finally ordered. In 1917 two Daimler and 12 Ehrhardt vehicles were produced, but 20 more were ordered later that year. After the war, another 20 cars of the 1917 pattern were built, some of which may have seen active service during the 1919 unrest in Berlin and other German cities.