Craig Moore reports on the development of the Humber Light Reconnaissance Car
This Humber LRC Mk.III is now on display at Bastogne Barracks in Belgium
While searching for information on Vickers light tanks in the National Archives at Kew, I stumbled on reports on the Humber Light Reconnaissance Car (LRC). The first I saw was about the prototype, but the more unusual document was a comparative trial conducted at the Mechanisation Experimental Establishment (MEE) in Chertsey, Surrey, on November 25, 1940, between the Humber ‘Ironside’ light armoured car and the Morris experimental light armoured car.
Interestingly, this 1940 report did not use the term ‘light reconnaissance car’. This can be confusing because Humber & Co Ltd (Rootes Group) also produced a heavily armoured car called the Humber Armoured Car, based on a Guy Company’s Karrier Works design. It weighed 5 tonnes, whereas the lighter Humber LRC only weighed 3.17 tonnes.
‘The LRC was intended to advance quickly until it made contact with the enemy, then use its speed to get out of trouble and report the enemy’s location using its radio’
The design
With the loss of so much equipment in France following the British Expeditionary Force’s ev…
