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Pieter B.
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 Posted: Tue 30 Jun, 2015 8:59 am Post subject: |
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| Vasilly T wrote: | | Pieter B. wrote: | I just quickly went through one of the Swiss chronicles detailing the Burgundian wars and it's absolutely full of depictions of dead and fleeing people with blood streaming out of their helmet. And lats of folks having head wounds in general.
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/bbb/Mss-hh-I...equence-49 |
So in the end we've come to the same conclusion as in the neighbouring thread called "Weapons versus plate armour": we need more research on armour penetration.
By the way, have anyone ever made a penetration test on an armour replica that was created using medieval technologies and materials? |
You mean using bloomery or early blast furnace steel with slag inclusions being hammered into plates with varying thickness and then hardened and tempered by judging the color?
Not that I am aware of, besides there was a lot of variance in quality back then so even a dozen of breastplates/helmets produced in that way might not be entirely representative.
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Vasilly T
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| Posted: Tue 30 Jun, 2015 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="Pieter B."][quote="Vasilly T"] | Pieter B. wrote: |
You mean using bloomery or early blast furnace steel with slag inclusions being hammered into plates with varying thickness and then hardened and tempered by judging the color?
Not that I am aware of, besides there was a lot of variance in quality back then so even a dozen of breastplates/helmets produced in that way might not be entirely representative. |
Well, Williams in his book divided armour types by quality into four representative groups, so I guess it wasn't as bad as you say.
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John Hardy
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| Posted: Tue 30 Jun, 2015 12:27 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="Vasilly T"][quote="Pieter B."] | Vasilly T wrote: | | Pieter B. wrote: |
You mean using bloomery or early blast furnace steel with slag inclusions being hammered into plates with varying thickness and then hardened and tempered by judging the color?
Not that I am aware of, besides there was a lot of variance in quality back then so even a dozen of breastplates/helmets produced in that way might not be entirely representative. |
Well, Williams in his book divided armour types by quality into four representative groups, so I guess it wasn't as bad as you say. |
I imagine the problem "back in the day" was figuring out just where your own personal armour fell in that continuum of variable quality that Williams has more or less arbitrarily divided into four "representative groups" -- and doing so before you put your life on the line by having people hammering on it with weapons while you were inside... It would have been unpleasant to discover your top-grade breastplate had a couple unsuspected slag-inclusion weak spots only when the poleaxe hit there...
I wonder if the saying "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link" actually started in the days of mail? A couple rings with inclusions in them could weaken the protective value of the whole shirt.
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Christopher B Lellis
Location: Houston, Texas Joined: 01 Dec 2012
Posts: 268
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| Posted: Tue 30 Jun, 2015 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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They probably were wearing steel helmets but their helmets got ripped off.
Richard the III was swarmed and captured, Someone could have easily torn his helmet off and would have. Why hack at a steel helmet?
I got into a vicious fight in high school during football practice. I pulled the other guys helmet off and not gently either, this was back in the late 90s.
It's pretty natural to pull protective gear off, that was the first thing I did.
Protective armor can and will be removed, if you are being overpowered.
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Christopher B Lellis
Location: Houston, Texas Joined: 01 Dec 2012
Posts: 268
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| Posted: Tue 30 Jun, 2015 4:38 pm Post subject: |
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Also the steel helmets could have fallen off from violent movements, made easier by being drenched in sweat. Or the wearer could have even removed it on his own accord.
Maybe the helmet was so uncomfortable they couldn't stand it and threw it off, maybe it was obstructing their vision or hindering their breathing.
There are many, many factors that play into why someone who went into battle wearing armor wasn't wearing all of it at the time of death.
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Vasilly T
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| Posted: Tue 30 Jun, 2015 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Pieter B. wrote: |
I imagine the problem "back in the day" was figuring out just where your own personal armour fell in that continuum of variable quality that Williams has more or less arbitrarily divided into four "representative groups" -- and doing so before you put your life on the line by having people hammering on it with weapons while you were inside... It would have been unpleasant to discover your top-grade breastplate had a couple unsuspected slag-inclusion weak spots only when the poleaxe hit there...
I wonder if the saying "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link" actually started in the days of mail? A couple rings with inclusions in them could weaken the protective value of the whole shirt. |
Williams wrote that slag inclusions weren't a completely bad thing and actually could act as crack-stoppers and if we're talking about highest quality steel like from South german armourers, their armour had very few slag inclusions, almost absent of slag.
But yet again, all of this is just a speculation, until a proper test is made on such armour, I'd like to abstain from any kind of claims from my side.
| Christopher B Lellis wrote: |
Maybe the helmet was so uncomfortable they couldn't stand it and threw it off, maybe it was obstructing their vision or hindering their breathing.
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I remember from Tobias Capwell's lecture(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COAIQPsgZWY) that munition grade armour was not only often made out of inferior steel, but also armourers tended to put as less work as possible in it, only to the point where you could somehow wear it, without talking about any kind of comfort. So there would be nothing surprising if some fighters preferred to ditch such helmets when they engaged in melee, since it would be more of a hindrance than of actual use. Or, given that it was poorly made, it was easily pulled off by an enemy, like you've said already.
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Vasilly T
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| Posted: Wed 01 Jul, 2015 2:11 am Post subject: |
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Actually after reading the provided sources more carefully I've realised that we really just repeat the same conclusions made by the researchers:
| Quote: | | Novak (2000) mentioned that the head may have been the primary target. She suggested that the reason for this could be poor quality of the helmets. An alternative explanation could be that the helmets were easy to knock off in battle or that the helmets had been dropped by the men while trying to escape their enemies (Knu¨sel & Boylston, 2000). |
| Quote: | | With reference to the above described skeletal samples, the trauma distribution in Uppsala indicates differences in quality of protective gear on different body parts of the victims—in this case a satisfactory body protection in combination with poor, or lack of, helmets. |
| Quote: | | When analysed in detail, the trauma patterns indicate that the men were trying to escape or at least did not meet their enemy in a traditional face-to-face situation. The low prevalence of typical defence injuries, the high number of posterior injuries, the comparatively few frontal wounds on the crania, the large number of horizontal cranial wounds and the lack of a left side dominance among the wounds, all simply that most of the men in the burial were not standing upright facing the antagonists. |
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Pieter B.
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| Posted: Wed 01 Jul, 2015 6:57 am Post subject: |
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The last quote was only in regards to the Uppsala grave. Only two out of the 60 or so found had healed head injuries and the injuries were supposedly inflicted while they were fleeing. All of which indicates the grave of Uppsala was filled with inexperienced or even non-soldiers.
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Pieter B.
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Pieter B.
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| Posted: Mon 13 Jul, 2015 1:43 pm Post subject: |
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I found two interesting threads. These are old threads but the posts in it indicate getting through a helmet with certain weapons might be a danger to the wearer after all. Which really makes me wonder why they didn't beef up helmets a bit more.
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...mp;start=0
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...mp;start=0
Modern SCA helmets require a minimum thickness of 1.6 mm as per these rules
http://www.sca.org/officers/marshal/docs/marshal_handbook.pdf
The thread lists how thickness in quite a few medieval examples varied from front to the sides. Seeing how the side of the head showed the most injuries it might explain a thing or two.
| Quote: | Longbow: a Social and Military History by Robert Hardy (note the varying thicknesses between the thickest parts and the thinnest).
German Bascinet 1380: Top Front: 150 thou (3.81 mm); Visor Snout: 60 thou (1.52 mm)
German Bascinet c. 1375: Top Front: 96 thou (2.44 mm); Side: 50 thou (1.27 mm)
Italian Bascinet c. 1375: Top Front: 120 thou (3.05 mm); Back: 60 thou (1.52 mm)
Italian Bascinet c. 1375: Top Front: 180 thou (4.57 mm); Side and Back: 100 thou (2.54 mm) |
It seems 18 or 16 gauge for the sides is quite reasonable with a weight not that much over 5 lbs.
Considering the average foot soldier might not have had high carbon heat treated helmets it seems within the realm of possibility that a strong blow could manage to dent and possible wedge apart 1.5mm of steel.
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Vasilly T
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| Posted: Tue 14 Jul, 2015 12:41 am Post subject: |
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What makes you so sure that they used the same thickness for low quality armour?
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Pieter B.
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| Posted: Tue 14 Jul, 2015 4:16 am Post subject: |
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| Vasilly T wrote: | | What makes you so sure that they used the same thickness for low quality armour? |
The low weight of all those helmets.
Read the threads and you'll find Randall posted a small thing about the French king buying helmets in bulk.
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Vasilly T
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| Posted: Tue 14 Jul, 2015 5:37 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | King of France ordering a huge number of armours and open faced bascients in 1384 for an infantry force. That in itself is interesting but more so is one of the requirements is that all the harnesses weigh over 25 pound and the bascients over 4. I can only assume as he makes these weights required as a) they made armour and bascients lighter at times. b) these were not desirable to his force because how thin they were even for munitions armour as he was buying was going to be lower quality anyways he was trying to avoid helmets and armour he felt were not effective. |
Considering those were infantry bascinets, they could go without face defence. And as we can see the king explicitly stated that he wanted heavier ones as he knew that ligher would be rubbish because of the material they would be made of. So once again, I see no reason to assume that infantry wore helmets of the same thickness, because as we can see they were trying to avoid that.
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Pieter B.
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| Posted: Tue 14 Jul, 2015 8:06 am Post subject: |
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| Vasilly T wrote: | | And as we can see the king explicitly stated that he wanted heavier ones as he knew that ligher would be rubbish because of the material they would be made of. So once again, I see no reason to assume that infantry wore helmets of the same thickness, because as we can see they were trying to avoid that. |
The fact that he explicitly states that he wants helmets of a certain weight could indicate helmets with a lower weight were around. One other thing to consider it doesn't sound likely that those thicker helms would have provided more protection than thinner "knightly" helmets.
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Vasilly T
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| Posted: Tue 14 Jul, 2015 9:05 am Post subject: |
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Well of course they were around, there are plenty of examples of fraud in arms and armour market, from fake "Ulfberts" in Viking Era to fake bulletproof armour in Renaissance and Early Modern Period and it's only from the top of my head.
Still it doesn't give us a right to assume that wearing such fakes was a standard practice.
| Quote: | | One other thing to consider it doesn't sound likely that those thicker helms would have provided more protection than thinner "knightly" helmets. |
Maybe not more but at least the same, or close to it. Higher quality steel was indeed a lot better though, not only because of higher carbon content and heat treatment, but also because it tended to contain very few slag inclusions, compared to munition grade iron.
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Lafayette C Curtis
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| Posted: Thu 23 Jul, 2015 10:38 am Post subject: |
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| Pieter B. wrote: | | Did it restrict breathing or vision, or both, without the bevor? |
From my own experience of wearing helmets, breathing restriction isn't a purely mechanical matter. Even when a helmet leaves the nose and mouth region uncovered, the reduction in peripheral vision can still make it feel like my breathing is being restricted even if it really isn't. So let's not underestimate the psychological factor here.
| Pieter B. wrote: | | I found two interesting threads. These are old threads but the posts in it indicate getting through a helmet with certain weapons might be a danger to the wearer after all. Which really makes me wonder why they didn't beef up helmets a bit more. |
Maybe because helmets -- like most other kinds of military gear -- simply spent the vast majority of their time being dead weight that had to be carried all around the place in non-combat situations. Even today, soldiers who have never been in combat often don't see the point in lugging around so many kilograms of helmet and body armour. Some Roman military writers also remarked on the need to keep their soldiers wearing caps or hats in day-to-day camp life so that the sensation of having something on their heads would not feel so jarring when they had to put on helmets for drills or combat.
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Pieter B.
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| Posted: Thu 23 Jul, 2015 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Lafayette C Curtis wrote: | | Pieter B. wrote: | | Did it restrict breathing or vision, or both, without the bevor? |
From my own experience of wearing helmets, breathing restriction isn't a purely mechanical matter. Even when a helmet leaves the nose and mouth region uncovered, the reduction in peripheral vision can still make it feel like my breathing is being restricted even if it really isn't. So let's not underestimate the psychological factor here.
| Pieter B. wrote: | | I found two interesting threads. These are old threads but the posts in it indicate getting through a helmet with certain weapons might be a danger to the wearer after all. Which really makes me wonder why they didn't beef up helmets a bit more. |
Maybe because helmets -- like most other kinds of military gear -- simply spent the vast majority of their time being dead weight that had to be carried all around the place in non-combat situations. Even today, soldiers who have never been in combat often don't see the point in lugging around so many kilograms of helmet and body armour. Some Roman military writers also remarked on the need to keep their soldiers wearing caps or hats in day-to-day camp life so that the sensation of having something on their heads would not feel so jarring when they had to put on helmets for drills or combat. |
I was under the impression that Romans commonly wore hats like most pre 1950 people, surprised to hear they didn't.
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Jeffrey Faulk
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| Posted: Thu 23 Jul, 2015 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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Hats are a very variable thing throughout history. They weren't terribly common in classical Greece and Rome, although straw sun-hats were encountered. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, they were more of a common cultural thing.
Really it's a very culture-specific thing though. Some cultures wear them, others don't. The Romans simply were not big on them.
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This is a standard topic