The Armour Archive

Photographed earlier this week at <a href="http://www.nps.gov/fova/">Ft. Vancouver National Historic Site</a>, on the outskirts of Vancouver, Washington. It was found during excavations at the site.

Yeah Ive seen that, very cool.

There was an entire course of "research" on battlefield protective armour during WWI, and a LOT of it was based the study of medieval armour. Bashford Dean, then (I think) curator of arms at the Met, led the efforts and came up with some pretty cool stuff, either "retro" or "ripoff" depending on your point of view. He also covered it pretty well in his book Helmets and Body Armor in Modern Warfare.

Here is a german snipers armour I ran across:

Glen K wrote:There was an entire course of "research" on battlefield protective armour during WWI, and a LOT of it was based the study of medieval armour. Bashford Dean, then (I think) curator of arms at the Met, led the efforts and came up with some pretty cool stuff, either "retro" or "ripoff" depending on your point of view. He also covered it pretty well in his book Helmets and Body Armor in Modern Warfare.

Don't forget John W. Higgins efforts, and the work of the Worcester Pressed steel company either!

That is only the second one of those visored helmets I have seen - another is/was on display in the West Point Museum back in the late '70's when I visited it.

juan wrote:Photographed earlier this week at <a href="http://www.nps.gov/fova/">Ft. Vancouver National Historic Site</a>, on the outskirts of Vancouver, Washington. It was found during excavations at the site.

OK, I live in Vancouver and I'm totally miffed that something like this is sitting right under my nose and I missed it

Where exactly is this piece residing, not at the Fort? maybe somewhere else in the barracks? Pretty please tell me.

kinda makes one ownder when we will see something like this again. With the technoligical advances in mateials, I can't help but wonder if we'll one day see a 'modern' suit of armor, made from some sort of composite material.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 2#18727222
http://www.bulletproofme.com/PHOTO%20pa ... Vest.shtml

Just saw one at a militaria show in Milan.

There were also scores of austrian ww1 uniform and weapons: trench maces could be out of the thirteen/fourteenth century as well, so similar many of them were.


people captured with such maces or with sharpened spades could be shot on teh spot as such weapons were prohibited and considered cruel to use.

THe helmet found and now on display is known as the Model 8. Ford made 1300 of them in November of 1918. The suspension was based on the Germam M-1916 but included a new type of chin strap that would go on to be used in the M1917A1 ( the US version of the Tommy helmet and kept in service until the begining of WWII) and the famous M1 "pot helmet". It was constructed of Hadfield Manganese and weight just over three pounds. It was made and submitted for general issue and was one of a large number of expiremental helmets made at the end off and just after WWI many obvioulsy using medieval designs as starting points. There was not much interest in the model 8 so no more than the original 1300 were made. Survivng examples command very high dollar values due to thier scarcity. A model 8 was used as the cover art for a late 80's reprint of L. Ron Hubbard's Final Blackout.

If you can find a copy of Steel Pots its got tons of pics and info on US helmet development in the 20th century.

There was one of these helmets on Ebay not too long ago. Got too pricey for me though, ended up selling around $1600 if I remember right.

Grant

I was just on Amazon, you might want to head to the library for Steel Pots, the cheapest was a used at $124.00. The same author did a second book on painted helmets that look really good ( i've owned a few over the years).

Giles de Bois Guilbert wrote:

juan wrote:Photographed earlier this week at <a href="http://www.nps.gov/fova/">Ft. Vancouver National Historic Site</a>, on the outskirts of Vancouver, Washington. It was found during excavations at the site.

OK, I live in Vancouver and I'm totally miffed that something like this is sitting right under my nose and I missed it

Where exactly is this piece residing, not at the Fort? maybe somewhere else in the barracks? Pretty please tell me.

It's at the fort itself, in the building with the red doors next to the flagpole and across from the carpentry and Counting House. It's in a cabinet at the end of the hallway where the archaelogy offices are.

kinda makes one ownder when we will see something like this again. With the technoligical advances in mateials, I can't help but wonder if we'll one day see a 'modern' suit of armor, made from some sort of composite material.

From what I understand, our current technology does not allow the ceramic plates to be produced with compound curves, at least from an effecient mass-production standpoint. During a HC shoot at GA Tech I met a professor who's working on just that, forming those bulletproof ceramic plates into complex curves. Once they figure out how to do that, well...

Glen K wrote:

kinda makes one ownder when we will see something like this again. With the technoligical advances in mateials, I can't help but wonder if we'll one day see a 'modern' suit of armor, made from some sort of composite material.

From what I understand, our current technology does not allow the ceramic plates to be produced with compound curves, at least from an effecient mass-production standpoint. During a HC shoot at GA Tech I met a professor who's working on just that, forming those bulletproof ceramic plates into complex curves. Once they figure out how to do that, well...

I was watching an episode of Modern Marvels, and they were doing one on Carbon, at one point they mentioned 'Carbon Fiber' technology, saying ot was something like 5 times stronger and 3 times lighter then steel. It's being used in Indy Cars and will soon be applied to Aircraft bodies as well to reduce fule usage.

Now combine that with a strength enhancing exo skelton that I saw on an episode of 'Nextworld' and well... I'm all jibbly

I might have to look into that. I just started a job building machines for shaping phenolics and carbon fiber and the owner has all kinds of contacts with military higher ups(he used to run some kind of development for hummer production). He wants ideas on things we could try out production of...