Why WW2 infantry wasn't equiped with body armour ??

Discussions on the equipment used by the Axis forces, apart from the things covered in the other sections. Hosted by Juha Tompuri
Clive Mortimore
Member
Posts: 1288
Joined: 06 Jun 2009, 23:38

Re: Why WW2 infantry wasn't equiped with body armour ??

#31

Post by Clive Mortimore » 31 May 2012, 22:04

Trackhead M2 wrote:
Clive Mortimore wrote:The British did devise body armour, 1 million sets were ordered but this was reduced to 300,000 because the commanders could decide who would be issued with it, in the end 15,000 sets were sent to the 21st Army group but never used. The RAF received quite a large number but I do not know waht they done with them.
Am I right that the term "Flak Jacket" as we called the armoured vest we wore in Northern Ireland, comes from the jackets worn by USAAF bomber crews to protect them from shell splinters from German Anti-Aircraft guns. The USAAF wore body armour in WW2.

Clive
Dear Clive,
Don't you think RAF crews needed the armor for the same reasons the USAAF crews did?
Strike Swiftly,
TH-M2
Hi Trackhead

I think you may be right, the RAF crews didn't need armour like the USAAF crews despite being shot at by the same German FlaK batteries, machine gunned by the same Luftwaffe fighters while over the same targets.

Clive
Clive

Trackhead M2
Member
Posts: 1004
Joined: 24 Mar 2012, 17:48
Location: North Utica, IL

Re: Why WW2 infantry wasn't equiped with body armour ??

#32

Post by Trackhead M2 » 31 May 2012, 22:08

Clive Mortimore wrote:
Trackhead M2 wrote:
Clive Mortimore wrote:The British did devise body armour, 1 million sets were ordered but this was reduced to 300,000 because the commanders could decide who would be issued with it, in the end 15,000 sets were sent to the 21st Army group but never used. The RAF received quite a large number but I do not know waht they done with them.
Am I right that the term "Flak Jacket" as we called the armoured vest we wore in Northern Ireland, comes from the jackets worn by USAAF bomber crews to protect them from shell splinters from German Anti-Aircraft guns. The USAAF wore body armour in WW2.

Clive
Dear Clive,
Don't you think RAF crews needed the armor for the same reasons the USAAF crews did?
Strike Swiftly,
TH-M2
Hi Trackhead

I think you may be right, the RAF crews didn't need armour like the USAAF crews despite being shot at by the same German FlaK batteries, machine gunned by the same Luftwaffe fighters while over the same targets.

Clive
Dear Clive,
They sure sweated out the same round trips with the same radar stations helping the Dora Dora boys find them.
Strike Swiflty,
TH-M2


Laurence Strong
Member
Posts: 1221
Joined: 16 Jan 2005, 07:01
Location: Alberta, Canada

Re: Why WW2 infantry wasn't equiped with body armour ??

#33

Post by Laurence Strong » 01 Jun 2012, 02:02

Don't you think RAF crews needed the armor for the same reasons the USAAF crews did?
Strike Swiftly,TH-M2
This is from Wiki:

The first usage of the term “flak jacket” refers to the armour originally developed by the Wilkinson Sword company during World War II to help protect Royal Air Force (RAF) air personnel from the flying debris and shrapnel thrown by German anti-aircraft guns' high-explosive shells (flak itself is an abbreviation for the German word "Fliegerabwehrkanone" (anti-aircraft gun)). The idea for the flak jacket came from Col. Malcolm C. Grow, Surgeon of the US Eighth Air Force in Britain. He thought that many wounds he was treating could have been prevented by some kind of light armor. In 1943 he was awarded the Legion of Merit for developing the flak vest.

Unfortunately, flak jackets proved to be too bulky for wear within the confines of the RAF's standard bomber aircraft, the Avro Lancaster. The Royal Air Force subsequently offered the jackets to the United States Army Air Forces, which adopted them as a Defense Standard

Kilgore Trout
Member
Posts: 193
Joined: 20 Jun 2011, 21:41

Re: Why WW2 infantry wasn't equiped with body armour ??

#34

Post by Kilgore Trout » 01 Jun 2012, 17:04

The Lancaster rear turret was so small that the gunner had to remove his parachute and hang it on a hook further forward in the fuselage. An old Reader's Digest article by a Lancaster rear gunner relates how his 'plane was attacked by a German nightfighter and set on fire. By the time he could get to his parachute, it was in flames. He decided he did not want to burn to death, and so reversed the turret and dropped out at 18,000 ft. Miraculously, he fell through some coniferous trees into snow and lived. He had only relatively minor injuries and was a happy P.O.W. - "I Fell 18,000 feet without a Parachute" by Nicholas Stephen Alkemade.
Likely, the same situation would exist for the belly turret gunner in a B-17 or B-24.

Dunserving
Member
Posts: 757
Joined: 14 Sep 2009, 12:43
Location: UK, not far north of Dungeness

Re: Why WW2 infantry wasn't equiped with body armour ??

#35

Post by Dunserving » 09 Jun 2012, 21:55

I've never clambered inside a Lancaster gun turret, but a couple of days ago I met someone who did as a youngster in the RAF after the war. He told me that it was really quite difficult to get into front or rear turrets and that there was little room in ordinary clothes. When wearing thick flying clothing to combat the cold..... He reckoned that getting out in a hurry from an aircraft on its way down would have been pretty much impossible. Definitely no room for a parachute or flak jacket.

Timlugia
New member
Posts: 1
Joined: 08 Oct 2016, 23:45
Location: San Francisco

Re: Why WW2 infantry wasn't equiped with body armour ??

#36

Post by Timlugia » 08 Oct 2016, 23:56

Sorry being late on this topic, but I would like to offer a different theory regarding this topic.

It could be because at the time, the injury patter in combat wasn't well understood.
Today we know that majority of combat injury and death were result of shrapnel wounds of indirect fire (grenade, mortar, bombs)instead of direct fire such as bullets. Hence a shrapnel resisting vest is far more important than a bullet resisting ones.
This concept, I believe was only well studied after Second World Wars. As the result, soldiers in Korea war began to issue with flak vest. (such as M-1951)

As for the Second World War, a usable flak vest was certainly possible.
Based on my amateur calculation, had they made flak vest based on modern day plate carrier specs (10x12 in breastplates front and back, 6x8 side plates) with Hadfield steel (harden steel with 12% manganese content), it would weight approx 4kg with only minor reduce of mobility.

It would not stop a rifle or machine gun round, but should be sufficient to deflect most of shrapnel and smg rounds away from human vital organs.

Post Reply

Return to “Other Equipment”