At the height of the Prohibition-era gang wars, the infamous gangster Al Capone had enemies everywhere. He also had a ride like no one else. Capone’s car was a beautiful green Cadillac -- the pride of General Motors -- equipped with a powerful V8, windows made from one-inch-thick glass and body panels stuffed with 3,000 pounds of bulletproof armor.
It was the most gangster car in Chicago, but it wasn’t the most gangster car in America. Funny enough, the U.S. Army had a few custom Cadillacs of its own.
Instead of the 1928 Cadillac that Capone drove, the Army’s cars were 1915 models that might have given Capone the idea to up-armor his Caddy. I can’t say whether or not they inspired mob bosses and hitmen, but I know that they gave rise to the armored combat vehicles the U.S. military uses today.
The Problem: Enemy Grunts with Rifles
In the early 1900s, warfare didn’t look too different from the way people fought 100 years earlier. Soldiers still trained to fight shoulder to shoulder and deliver volley fire; they just did it with bolt-action rifles instead of muskets.
There were signs that combat was about to undergo a hard shift, though. The Banana Wars and Boxer Rebellion showed that technology and tactics had surpassed raw numbers for superiority on the battlefield, particularly in irregular warfare. Horses were no longer the fastest way to reconnoiter and attack the enemy, either.
Observation balloons and dirigibles brought the fight to the sky. Machine guns matched the firepower of an entire infantry company. Unlike horses and mules, motorized vehicles carried supplies without the need for food, water and rest.
Some of the military’s more astute officers saw these changes and knew there had to be a better way to take on masses of enemy infantry than falling in at close intervals and walking toward them in step.
The Solution: Friendly Grunts with Rifles and a Fast Car
In 1915, just two years before the U.S. entered World War I, an Army Reserve Corps officer named Royal Davidson gave the U.S. military its first true armored vehicle.
According to the Florida newspaper the Highlands News-Sun, Davidson was as much an inventor as a soldier. He had spent two decades trying to convince Army leadership to replace horses with machines. Davidson pitched bicycles and tricycle-mounted machine guns, but neither of those ideas were better than four hooves and 1,000 pounds of muscle.
His first breakthrough was an answer to the threat of enemy balloons. To shoot down a zeppelin, you needed lots of firepower and the ability to match the aircraft’s speed. The answer, according to Davidson, was a machine gun bolted to a convertible.
As the historical site War Wheels points out, the Balloon Destroyer (what a name) was little more than an open-top 1909 Cadillac with a four-cylinder engine and a pair of .30-caliber machine guns on high-angle mounts. It was an interesting concept, but enemy ground troops posed a much larger threat than the occasional battle balloon, and it was only a matter of time before others saw the car’s potential.
Davidson’s next creation was bigger, better and created the armored combat vehicle concept as we know it today. The 1915 Davidson-Cadillac Armored Car was completely covered in metal plates, powered by a V8, and topped by an elevated machine-gun position.
To answer a question asked in the iconic 2008 Cadillac commercial -- yes, yes, it does.
According to reporting by the Highlands News-Sun, Davidson conducted what sounds like a pretty epic road trip from Chicago to San Francisco, with eight of his vehicles manned by Northwestern Military Academy cadets and representatives from the War Department to report on the trip’s success.
They brought reconnaissance equipment, map-making instruments, searchlights, radios, fireless cooking equipment, generators, and -- of course -- a few machine guns for good measure.
Best of all, DTS didn’t exist yet so they weren’t tortured by the living hell that is submitting (and resubmitting, and re-resubmitting) expense reports.
The trip was a success in the sense that all the cars completed the journey, but big Army wasn’t convinced to buy a fleet of armored Cadillacs to shuttle soldiers into battle.
One notable officer posed a pretty surprising way to save money on the concept, though.
According to American Historian, Gen. Leonard Wood (ever heard of him?) thought the best course of action was to hand out belt-fed weaponry to civilians and let them turn their own cars into rolling machine-gun nests to defend the nation against foreign invaders.
“It is possible that an owner could be induced to muster enough recruits to fully man his machine,” Wood said. “If so, he would come into the training camp with his car and four, five, or six men, according to the capacity of his machine, and in this way we should obtain enough men with every two or three hundred cars to form a regiment. To this regiment we could assign trucks, ambulances, armored cars, machine guns, and special motor vehicles.”
Talk about delegating authority. Keep your roof rack clear in case Uncle Sam sends you a Javelin missile and a request to defend the motherland.
Don’t Call It a Shitty Technical
Ultimately, the Davidson-Cadillac wasn’t the smash hit Davidson hoped it would be. According to the historical military vehicle site Landships, the vehicle saw limited production and only sporadic use during World War I. It’s even the subject of internet ridicule on Reddit’s “Shitty Technicals.”
So no, the Davidson-Cadillac didn’t instill fear in the enemy and win wars. It was heavy, rear-wheel drive and not equipped with enough firepower to make a significant impact on the battlefield.
But it was a groundbreaking proof of concept. There’s a direct lineage from it to the M3 half-tracks of World War II, the up-armored Humvees of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the armored combat vehicles of tomorrow.
Look What a Gunned-Up Cadillac Gave Us
As you read this, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle is standing by to wreck any enemy foolish enough to get in its way. Hybrid powertrains are already in use, and electric combat vehicles are on the way. The Army should make a selection on the Robotic Combat Vehicle program in the near future. And it’s all because a reservist bolted steel plates and a pair of machine guns to a convertible Cadillac.
Davidson’s inventions didn’t score a lucrative military contract, thwart a hostile balloon invasion or roll through German defenses during World War I. The most impressive mission they accomplished was shuttling college kids and a few government officials to San Francisco for a fun road trip.
But those Cadillacs were still America’s first armored combat vehicles. They proved that the idea was viable, and they paved the way for some of the most legendary military vehicles the U.S. military has ever fielded. I’d call that a success.
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