Helmet Strength

[JaimeH]

I read an account by an American tanker who during the hedgerow fighting, witnessed a comrade shoot a .45 into an American helmet, it penetrated. He tried the same thing with a captured German helmet and it did not. After that they wore captured German helmets in their Sherman rest of the war. Were the German helmets tempered better than the GIs?

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Jamie, I can tell you one story. I am a British Airborne
re-enactor (as well as a German militaria collector). Each year I go over to Holland to the annual comemoration of the 1944 Battle of Arnhem. I go by 1942 Ford GPW Airborne Jeep. We have a camp for all the MV owners. One of the Dutch lads brought out his Bren Gun Carrier, a small fully tracked vehicle weighing in at a few tons. Fooling around, the Dutch lads got hold of a M42 Stahlhelm and preceeded to run over it with the Carrier. We expected to see the helmet crushed. The carrier ran over it, and the helmet was untouched! I guess the pounds per square inch were not that great, but it was both fun and painful to watch at the same time!
Cheers, Ade.

[prvtdck]

Jaime...not really an answer to your question but merely another observation! As a kid I tested German vs American helmets with 30.06 and ofcourse 8mm. The German helmets took 1st place even using combinations of 30.06 and 8mm. The American shells were shot thru and thru while the German shells help up wonderfully. Distance was about 100 yards!
Dave

[Rick Research]

My sister's godfather was sitting in a jeep with a buddy, lost somewhere in the woods early in '45 when they spotted an armed German soldier creeping up an embankment at them.

He whipped out his .45 and fired a round from above which impacted, as they found out, the top of the flared eye protection in front of the helmet. An inch lower and it would have gone through the German's nose. An inch higher into the dome, who knows what the ballistic effect would have been?

But that was one VERY lucky Kriegie for whom, once the teutonic tweetie birds stopped chirping and the stars stopped spinning, The War Was Over! All three of them thought he was a dead man!

I played with this helmet for years as a kiddo. It had a perfect thumbprint sized impact dent--and that was all. Range was probably no more than 10 meters/30 feet.

[Dez H]

Interesting stories gentlemen, I have another one, not sure if it is true or where it came from, interesting nonetheless. Apparently during the war SS men would prove their bravely or stupidity? By balancing one of them German grenades (potato mashers) on their head and setting it off. If it fell off the helmet, ie they moved, they would be killed. But if they had the nerves of steel and let it sit there and detonate, it wouldn’t injure them at all. Makes you wounder if the modern military kevlar helmets are any stronger or just simply lighter.

[Frank Heukemes]

Hi Gentlemen,

Germany went through the most sophisticated and painfully accurate "Beschusstests" for their steel helmets (as you can read about in the excellent book by Heinrich Baer "Der Stahlhelm"). Even for many, many years after the war the German steel helmet was considered to be by far the best one. This is common knowledge in Germany, probably not a very popular statement in the US. No bragging about German engineering, but that is just the way it is.------> see German cars

Cheers, Frank

hello everybody

that the Germans tested there material in a obsessive way is without doubt. I once saw a interesting interview on TV with an old politic prisonner who was sent to a labourcamp near the touwn of Halberstadt ( as I can remember, I'm not sure about the name of the touwn).

He and many others had to walk 13 houres a day ( for about 3 years !!) with experimental marchingboots on all kinds of undergrounds ; rocks, sand, mud,ect...

greetings

jan




From Flanders Fields