They seem in retrospect more intent on creating a brand icon of national identity in war -- the Adrian was a cross between a fireman's casque and the bravura Napoleonic Cuirassier helm, while the Brodie was the spitting image of the longbowmen's Chapel de Fer at Agincourt. Only the Germans created an effective helmet, borrowing liberally from one of the very best medieval designs, the Salade or Sallet.
The problem was, the German Stahlhelm became so instantly iconic that no Allied design dared to come near it for fear that their soldiers might somehow be doing silent homage to Hun -- thus dooming their effectiveness!
More on that later. Dean, writing after the war , cites different medical sources, but the range of casualties due to fragments artillery and mortars was as high as 70 to 95 percent. Steel fragments do not come at the soldier like rifle or machine gun bullets, at high velocity up to feet per second. Nearly all of them move at less than 1, feet per second. The best helmet steel could and did defeat these.
But helmets only protected the head -- and Allied helmets covered the head poorly. Still, 18 to gauge helmet steel. So alloys like silicon nickel or nickel-manganese-vanadium could protect against almost all fragments. With such steels already in high production for helmets, why not protect the torso too?
Weight was the big bugaboo of 20th century body armor. Some wanted armor panoplies that could stop machine gun and rifle rounds even at yards.
The Germans ramped up distributing their lobster-like suite toward war's end. Intended mostly for machine gunners, and at pounds, it was considered too heavy for regular infantry. Was there any hope for the front line soldier? Enter Bashford Dean and his team.
Met armorers crafted a battle harness with complete torso protection, front and back, for about 8. Moreover, Dean's panoply was fully cushioned with "vulcanized sponge-rubber," and with the latest alloys, could stop a. In terms of coverage, ease and comfort, and raw protection, this was as close as anyone in the war came to the Holy Grail of personal body armor.
Why do I believe body armor would have worked as advertised? Just think: If three-quarters of all combat casualties were from fragments, and if most fatalities from fragments penetrated the head and torso, then taking the head and torso out of reach of fragments should mean a lot. There was no ambiguity: with flak jackets, 58 percent fewer casualties.
Dean's "half armor" went exactly nowhere. Sure, it was worth ditching most of the arm defenses. The Springfield -Mauser battle rifle depended on smoothly reciprocating the bolt and recharging the weapon from stripper clips every five rounds. Medieval arm defenses, no matter how well articulated, were simply going to get in the way. But torso and shoulder defenses were another matter. In fact, the Met's cuirass itself was carefully cut out for effortless shouldering of the Springfield.
So why was nothing done? I believe that there were three impediments worth noting. The first , fear and loathing of "The Hun" by the Allies was the upfront impediment to American helmet design. Stalhelmophobia lasted for decades. When the U. But it still held off protecting temple and neck -- for fear it might look too German. Studies show that this helmet saved over 70, lives in World War II, but had Dean's Model 5 , or better yet Model 2 , been adopted, it would have saved perhaps another 5, American soldiers.
Get this: We let 5, of our young men die after because we did not want them to look like Germans. Ironically, when we finally got around in the s to replacing the Pot, we went straight to the Stahlhelm. The second impediment was the myth of weight, as in: those boys will never wear this stuff; they'll throw it off the first opportunity.
But in Iraq and Afghanistan, our "boys" wear stuff as heavy as a medieval Gendarme. At that time the only specific requirements for body armor was for over-all armor for engineer troops engaged in mine clearance work. A study was made by the Operations Research Office, Department of the Army, to determine the value of armor for the use by ground troops engaged in active combat.
The report of this study, issued in , was not favorable to the use of armor for active ground troops, partly because of the excessive weight of the standard models then available. Immediately after it was assigned responsibility for body armor, the Quartermaster Corps began development on a new type of vest utilizing flexible laminated nylon duck, recommended by the Ordnance Corps as the best of all lightweight flexible ballistic materials.
The fibres of nylon trap jagged fragments of low-velocity missiles, which cause the majority of combat wounds. Ordnance Corps ballistic tests reveal that nylon, weight for weight, is superior even to steel in stopping fragments from exploding missiles.
Spot-laminating was substituted for full laminating to achieve greater flexibility in later models of the Army body armor and the groin apron was eliminated. In the Army nylon armor was redesigned as a one-piece vest. This model was the progenitor of the present Army armored vest. Meantime the Department of the Navy also had been engaged in extensive body armor development, concentrating principally on the use of Doron.
In experts of the Army Quartermaster Corps and the Marine Corps began joint experiments on various models utilizing both Doron and nylon. In , test models of a combination of Doron-nylon armor, for which the Quartermaster Corps furnished the fabric, Doron and webbing, and which were made by the Marine Corps, were shipped to Korea for test under supervision of a joint Army Marine Corps team.
This vest used over-lapping, curved Doron plates around the upper torso and nylon duck over the shoulders. Missed auditory information can be fatal for a soldier; therefore, helmet design requires compromise between protection and optimal acoustics. Twelve soldiers localised two sound signals presented from six azimuth angles and three levels of elevation presented at two intensity levels and with three background noises. Each participant completed the task while wearing no helmet and with two U.
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