A cornucopia of helms or mayhap a menagerie? |
At the opening of
the Great War, in August 1914, all warring nations went into combat
wearing cloth, leather or felt helmets. The Germans wore the
distinctive boiled leather, pickelhaube, resplendent with a decorative
spike. After the great battles of maneuver in the summer and autumn
of 1914, the war settled into its distinctive pattern of static trench
conflict. It was soon noticed by all combatants that their soldiery
was suffering greatly from head wounds, mostly fatal, from exploding
shells. Even the cover of the trenches offered no protection from
shells designed to burst in flight, thus delivering a deluge of death
from above. The answer, of course, was to design a metal helmet to
deflect and absorb shell splinters and ball from shrapnel shells. The
French in 1915 introduced a metal skull cap designed to fit under the
cloth kepi. This was a stop-gap solution and it was clear that a more
rigorously engineered helmet was required.
Both the German and
British armies in 1915 were considering how to protect their
soldier’s heads. Both nations took a lead from medieval designs.
The British copied the ‘kettle’ style helm beloved by English
archers during the ‘100 years’ war with France. The Germans took
their inspiration from the late medieval sallet style of headwear.
Each design had strengths and weaknesses as discussed below. It is a
common misconception that the helmets were designed to be immune to rifle fire; this was not the case. A helm manufactured to stop
rifle bullets would have been too heavy and cumbersome for practical
battle use. Helmets were primarily designed to resist low-velocity
shell fragments and clods thrown up from air and ground bursting ordinance.
British ‘Brodie’
Helmet
The Brodie helmet
was issued to British troops in time for the great Somme offensive of
July 1916. It consisted of a shallow bowl with a simple
extended rim. It was designed to provide maximum protection from air
bursts and in this regard, it worked rather well. The open
design also allowed good all-round vision and hearing was not
impeded. The helmet was easy to stamp out from a single sheet of
metal and was inexpensive to produce. However, because of its open
design, it provided little protection from munitions arriving from the
front, sides, and back. Paradoxically, it was noticed that the number of head wounds actually increased fivefold after the
introduction of the helmet. Some thought that the helmets emboldened the men to think they were invulnerable to head trauma and therefore were exposing themselves unnecessarily. There was even a move afoot, from high, to discard the helmets altogether. But, luckily for the men, wise heads prevailed, especially among those with a sound grounding in statistics and it was quickly realised that this vexed anomaly was due
to the helmet providing effective protection from head wounds as soldiers without helmets were unlikely to survive a shrapnel wound to
the head. The helmet, even if it did not completely stop the
projectile, at least lessened the damage caused.
Brodie Helmet |
German 'Stahlhelm'
The Germans adopted
a helmet designed to provide maximum protection from incoming
projectiles. The dome of the helmet was deep and leaves of metal
sloped down across the sides and front. Also, the helmet was extended
at the nape of the neck. Due to the stahlhelm's enclosed construction, both hearing and vision were restricted to some degree. The helmet
underwent various degrees of modification during the interwar years
and the Second World War to alleviate these problems.
Characteristically German, the helm was over-engineered and because
of its complex shape was time-consuming to manufacture and relatively
expensive. The side horns on the Great War helmets enabled the fixing of an additional front plate. This plate was usually issued to
snipers and was supposedly proof against rifle fire. The carapace
adornment was not issued to general troops due to its weight and
cumbersome nature.
Stahlhelm modeled by a pesky Hun |
French ‘Adrian’
Helmet
The French Adrian
helmet was the first effective head protector to be introduced by the
combatants. The design was apparently inspired by the French
fireman’s helmet (oo la la, missus). The helmet was composed of a
deep bowl with two separate brim pieces welded into position. To the
front, a riveted cap badge was introduced and on the top, a metal comb
was attached, again with rivets. The helmet was light and the metal
thin in comparison to British and German helmets. The holes for the
rivets introduced weak spots and compromised the integrity of the
helmet. The peaks to front and back provided decent protection to
the nape and upper face however, the sides were woefully
unprotected. Also, the helmet was complex to make and involved
riveting and welding multiple pieces. Therefore, the design was
expensive and difficult to manufacture. Later in the war, the French
acknowledged the inherent weakness of the front badge adornment and
replaced it with a simple painted emblem. To sum up: the helmet was
typically French and owed more to style than functionality.
Adrian Helmet |
All types of helmet
had an internal webbing structured for adjustment. The webbing was designed to leave a space between the wearer’s head and the helmet. This reflected sound practice and prevented dings and dents from impinging on the soldier’s delicate bonce.
In conclusion: The
British helmet could be considered the best trench helmet as it
provided excellent protection from projectiles raining from above.
However, due to its lack of side and back protection, it was less
efficient than the German stahlhelm in open combat. The French helm
provided the least protection of the three designs because of the
thin metal used and design weaknesses. The best, all-round helmet,
in my opinion, was the German stahlhelm and it is a testament to the
helm’s efficiency that modern combat helmets contain many features of the original German design.