Conceived after U.S. entry into W.W. I as a "trench assault car", the Armored Arrow was seen as a faster, more maneuverable replacement for the unreliable tanks of the day. Its mission was to clear a path through enemy barbed wire, pillboxes, machine-gun nests and mine-fields for the infantry.
Built by the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car company, a firm not known for armored vehicles, development was painfully protracted.
Not completed by the Armistice, the project languished until revived in the 1920's when the U.S. Army began to see the Armored Arrow as a viable alternative to the aging French Renault tanks of Great War vintage.
The new trench assault car became a victim of early mission-creep and was seen as a multi-role platform capable of almost any task in the Armored Corps except perhaps KP.
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'Sliberty S-12, a development of the famous
Liberty 12 cylinder engine, the Armored Arrow was potently armed, featuring a 2 inch main gun and four .50 caliber machine guns mounted in pairs in the turret and in remote-controlled side barbettes. The driver's cab featured slitted armor plate panels that could be lowered in less hostile environments.
The trench assault car's first test under field conditions occurred during the 1928 war games held in Okeechobee swamp where troops called it the "Alligator" for how menacing it appeared when emerging from the muck.
The Pierce-Arrow Alligator's next test was in chasing down the Mexican revolutionary bandit El Chalupa Loco and it was in the hot, Southwest desert border towns where problems began. The multi-role trench assault car was undone by its unreliable power-plant. The 'Sliberty S12 was unable to perform even after all that Okeechobee swamp muck was cleaned out.
This would set a pattern of aborted missions that would continue for the rest of the Armored Arrow's time in service. Various cures were tried, even switching to higher-grade fuel but nothing seemed to work.
Only 17 Pierce-Arrow Alligators were ever made and the last three were immobilized to take part in repressing the
Bonus Army marchers in the summer of 1932.
Those last three trench assault cars consumed their vitals upon starting, belching funereal clouds of black smoke signaling their ignominious demise.
While initially promising, the Pierce-Arrow Alligator turned out to be just another disappointing dead-end in American armored car development.
None survive today and the only remaining artifact of this once proud fighting vehicle is a rough, short
fun run model kit of which only one was ever sold, late at night long after closing in the darkened parking lot of the East Liberty Big Lots.
Brian da Basher
