Minerva Armored Car blog - The_ClocheFixer

Minerva Armored Car

The Minerva Armored Car was a militairy armored car expediently developed from Minerva civilian automobiles by Belgium at the start of the First World War.

The Minerva's use in combat in August 1914 made Belgium one of the first nations to employ armoured cars in the World War I, though Italy had previously been the first to use armoured cars in a theatre of conflict, in the 1911–1912 Italo-Turkish War.

During the war those that could afford to rode to battle on their own horses, much like this in 1914, Lieutenant Charles Henkart arranged for two of his civilian Minerva Motor Works tourers to be armoured at the Cockerill Works in Hoboken. The initial armoured cars were adhoc but soon Minerva had created a standard design. American papers were reporting the use of the armoured car by September 1914. The crew was partially exposed to gun fire with the open top. This would prove fatal to Lieutenant Henkart when on September 6, 1914 he was killed by gun fire after the armoured car he was in was caught in a German ambush. Before the Minerva factory was captured during the German invasion and occupation of Belgium about thirty Minerva armored cars were built. In 1916 the design of the original armored car was completely revised. The open top was now fully enclosed and the machine gun under an armored cupola. The Belgian Army used the cars as motorized cavalry units with three-cars platoons. The armoured car units were mostly used for reconnaissance, infantry fire support and missions behind enemy lines. After the Western Front became bogged down in trench warfare some of the cars were sent to the Eastern Front with the Belgian expeditionary corps in Russia.

The Germans were able capture three of the cars and modified them for use during the invasion of Romania with at least one being used during the 1919 troubles. They even saw use in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s.