The British Armoured Car With A Rolls-Royce Engine That Outlived The Empire That Built It

Britain built it in the 1950s, at the very end of empire. Six wheels, a tank-sized gun far too big for a vehicle its size, and a Rolls-Royce engine buried in the back. The officers questioned the gun. The reviewers called the engine an extravagance. And by the early 1970s the British Army itself had declared the whole thing obsolete. The empire that built it disappeared. The doctrine that created it was abandoned. Almost every vehicle designed to replace it came and went. And the Saladin just kept fighting. Aden. Cyprus. Oman. Northern Ireland. Lebanon. Sri Lanka. And in 1991, more than thirty years after it was written off, Kuwaiti crews used it to destroy Iraqi T-55 tanks in the streets of Kuwait City. This is the FV601 Saladin. More than eleven hundred built, over twenty nations, sixty-five years of service across three continents. The armored car everyone declared finished that simply refused to die. BritishWarFiles explores the hidden history of British and Commonwealth military hardware. Subscribe and join the BritishWarFiles