"Could Body Armor Have Saved Millions in World War I?" Topic

"Unlike ancient bloodlettings lost to memory, World War I lingers in our collective DNA. The image of the trenches is our icon of hell on earth. Ten million soldiers died in mud-ditches and no-mans-land during the Great War, and we remember this dark narrative because they died for nothing. After reaching pinnacles of human achievement, civilization set about to destroy itself out of pride over imagined slights and disrespect.

In total contrast, the early 1900s's Metropolitan Museum of Art's Arms and Armor Collection was a magical place. Boys steeped in Howard Pyle's Champions of the Round Table or Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company (and N.C. Wyeth's illustrations!), would have come here to see the armor … and dream.

But what does the Met armor collection have to do with World War I? We know from war poets like Rupert Brooke that so many of those boys would as men lead their soldiers and themselves to muddy death, still idealizing the knights they once dreamed to be…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Thanks Armand!

I disagree with his postulation that the men in WWI would not have ditched the armor. Generally the first thing men going over the top did was to get rid of excess weight. No one would want to be lugging an extra 15 pounds trying to cross NML. Especially the MG section, and the wire section and any other specialist carrying something heavy.

His argument that the belligerent nations made millions of shells and so could easily have made body armour too is spurious – there was a constant shortage of big guns and of shells on both sides for most of the war.

Through mud in body armour – sounds like a good way to get bogged down or even drowned (ask those French Agincourt knights what they thought of mud).

A better helmet might have done some good – but wouldn't have helped against large shells, large shell fragments, mustard gas, and disease. Flu killed thousands.

There was a private trade in body amour for the troops with a bit of spare change, or anxious relatives at home. It was mostly useless.

This came up earlier, but I am too lazy to dig up the TMP LINK.
Body armor would not have helped against the concussion from artillery, which is what killed most soldiers in the Great War..

Like so much modern hindsight about the Great War (or most other wars), this starts with the premise, "Oh! If only they'd thought of this!". Well, they did think of it, and tried it out, along with a great many other things that people thought might save the lives of their own men or kill greater numbers of the enemy.

The period 1914-1918 was not peopled with debased butchers or the irredeemably stupid, and for all the attendant waste and folly that goes hand in hand with any war, it still saw the greatest advancements in weapons and tactics within the confines of any discrete conflict.

"Flu killed thousands"

The flu killed millions.

The writer conveniently ignores that at some point armour fell almost completely out of favour when firearms were first introduced en masse.

There had been many attempts over the years to provide troops with some kind of armour, but as armies grew increasingly larger it would have been a prohibitively expensive initiative.

Doubt it would have helped a great deal – particularly not to those who drowned in the mud or were blown to bits by artillery shells…

All nations entered WWI without helmets. The French entered WWI without helmets AND in red pants (the infantry) AND with officers standing on the battlefield when the other ranks were ordered to lie on the ground.

Everyone soon understood all this was stupid. If armour had been useful, they would have seen it.

@Pictors – yes indeed – in total, but not in the trenches.

Patrick R is correct. Body armor proved ineffictive even for primitive muskets, and of course completely useless against cannon. If body armor was effecitve it would have lingered longer. The simple fact that most of the casualties in WWI were from artillery and machine guns, both of which body armor would have been completely ineffective again. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the "proof"mark against the old Cuirasses – made by a pistol shot from a few yards away. fired against the hardest piece of the plate. Even the ponderous tilting armor was ineffective at stopping a shot from a modern pistol or a rifle shot.

Only when you get to the tank can you have effective armor and they key there is you have a machine engine to provide the power to carry it around.

There have also been some modern studies that show that there is a weight limit over which additional body armour is less effective because it slows individuals too much and they take longer to cross a danger zone/become an easier target, therefore the casualty rates increase with additional weight of armour rather than reduce. IIRC it was around 6Kg for general war conditions. Obviously the weigth of body armour and helmet worn by forces in Afghanistan is more than that now but this is a different type of war fighting (and political imperitives on acceptable losses are different).

There was another thread on this topic recently. I posted on the experiments conducted by the German army. Body armour was ineffective in preventing casualties. Very very few men 'drowned' in mud. The big killer was artillery. Paradoxically, the biggest protector of men during an advance was artillery too. Effective barrages and counter-battery fire enabled infantry to advance with far fewer casualties.

Robert

I think better hygiene facilities would have saved many more lives than body armor, personally.

There's also the "Not Having a War" option for saving lives…?

That aside, I don't buy it. One thing not mentioned so far is that saving a soldier's life once will by no means make it certain that he'll survive the war. When you're looking at broad – and, I suspect, largely hypothetical – statistics it is worth remembering that there's nothing preventing the trooper saved by body armor from dying the next day in an artillery barrage; as such, I think the idea that so many more would have survived is a bit off.

John the OFM wrote:

Body armor would not have helped against the concussion from artillery, which is what killed most soldiers in the Great War..

No, we've already done this. It's the fragments from shells that cause most of the casualties from field artillery. Air blast comes a poor second, and for most purposes can be disregarded, as can incendiary and toxic effects, which are even more negligible.

Michael Vlahos obviously subscribes to the "butchers and bunglers" view of WW1, which I thought John Terraine, Gordon Corrigan and Richard Holmes (who once called it "The Blackadder view") had soundly demolished long since.

I doubt that sufficient ballistic protection could have been provided in a useful weight limit. The WW2 flak vests he refers to weighed 22lbs, and he says

There was no ambiguity: with flak jackets, 58 percent fewer casualties. Period.

However, if one follows the link provided, it is clear that this reduction occurred at a time when the percentage of battle-damaged aircraft fell by 28%. The adjusted reduction should probably be more like 48%; still very worth while, but not "58%, period."

I also tend to doubt the idea that fragments from HE weapons "almost all" travel at 1,000 ft/sec or less.

All the best,

John.

Even when people have an understanding of history they still may be doomed to repeat it because they think they are smarter and could have done it better.

leidang wrote:

Even when people have an understanding of history they still may be doomed to repeat it because they think they are smarter and could have done it better.

Indeed. I think people often assume that other people must be stupid because they live a long way away, either in time or in space.

All the best,

John.

Yes, I often use the example that the Romans "must" have been stupid because, in the same world we inhabit, they couldn't put a man on the Moon.

Glad you had enjoy the article my friend Charared.

Amicalement
Armand

I also tend to doubt the idea that fragments from HE weapons "almost all" travel at 1,000 ft/sec or less.

Frack, NO! Try more like 75% of burn speed. Lyddite (Picric acid) has a burn speed of 7500m/s, and was the most common filler material in explosive shells on all sides. Fragments would initially have a velocity of ~5600m/s, but would slow extremely rapidly due to air resistance and shape.

I have seen examples of WW1 body armor on several occasions at museums and one TV.
IIRC, the armor was used by snipers but I have not read of occsions when it was used by men charging accross 'no-mans land'.

From the article " Get this: We let 5,000 of our young men die after 1941 because we did not want them to look like Germans. "

And how many would have died – shot in friendly fire incidents – because they looked like Germans?

The answer to the question is, of course, yes.

Had Archduke Ferdinand and his wife ignored the heat and worn their silk undergarments on that day in Sarajevo…….

"Get this: We let 5,000 of our young men die after 1941 because we did not want them to look like Germans. "

And how many would have died – shot in friendly fire incidents – because they looked like Germans?

Probably not 5000, unless I completely misunderstand the volumes of fire and chances of surprising a unit.

Simply, no.

Regards,

J. P. Kelly