Steel Helmets

[BreakingBad]

A friend of mine sent a factoid (I did not verify) and I found it interesting"

"In WW1, after the British began issuing steel helmets as standard equipment, the reported incidents of head injuries rose"

It's kind of a trick question if true, any guesses?

[morfiend]

  Would make sense,the helmet you keep you alive so you have a head injury,without a steel helmet you'd be dead so no head injury!

  Also might have cause some more bravado than without a steel helmet,thus again more head injuries.

  Dont you just love stats,you can twist them to make any possible outcome!


   

[tmetal]

like morfiend said; stats don't lie but the interpretation of said stats can lead to twisted opinions.  Still interesting though. 

[Rino]

     When you have guys burying themselves neck deep in trenches, chances are pretty good that the head is the best target.
Like the Marines in Falleujah, Congress investigated all the headshots thinking they were executing Iraqis.  Turns out the Marines
are just very good shots and in city fighting the head is usually the only thing you saw.

[Hoffman]

In the past few years the Army has done some analysis and learned the the conventional chin-strap and padding/liner that we used to use in our helmets was actually bad for you in an explosion, the helmet would be pushed away, the strap would then bring it back and cause injury to the skull.  Which is why you see the increased padding and a more secure chin-strap that doesn't allowed the helmet to move much, if at all.

I can only imagine the effect being stuck in a trench and have days and weeks of artillery of every imaginable size being thrown at you.  What a nightmare.

[Seanaldinho]

Turns out the Marines are just very good shots and in city fighting the head is usually the only thing you saw.

Oorah!

[guncrasher]

I believed in ww1 they told soldiers to stop using straps as it would cause damage if they were hit in the head.  look at ww2 pictures and you will see that hardly anybody used them.  that was the lesson learned from ww1.


semp

[mthrockmor]

I tend to think the earlier comment about steel helmets causing some bravado. Compare rugby and football. One no helmet, the other a nice fancy one. Having played both, and I do not have data on this, I witnessed far more head injuries in football than rugby. Since there is no helmet in rugby the head is not used as a weapon and tackles are much different. Helmet=weapon=head injuries.

Though I could be wrong.

Boo

[cpxxx]

I think it's like morfiend says, more survivors from hits but more injuries. The British Brodie soup plate shaped helmet was designed to protect men while in the trenches from airburst shrapnel shells. I wouldn't believe the helmet led to more risk taking. Men would be killed daily, helmet or no helmet. Any illusion that the helmet made you immune to that would soon be dispelled. The same argument is also used about any safety device, airbags, motorcycle helmets etc. Never bought into that myself.

I actually own a British WW1 helmet. It's a heavy uncomfortable thing. I wore the WW2 version in my time as a reservist. It was not much better.

As for the straps, they soon become uncomfortable on the chin, so we either wore them open or worn on the back of the head. Part of the reason you see a lot of GIs in WW2 with open straps was the idea than an enemy would come from behind and strangle you with the strap or that a nearby explosion would break you neck. Patton didn't buy into that and in his 3rd Army he had strict rules about wearing of helmets. Later versions of the M1 had straps that were designed to open at a certain pressure.

[BreakingBad]

The answer is that fatalities were not classified as a wound, simply a death.

So with the advent of helmets, more soldiers were surviving head wounds that would otherwise been fatal, thus more head wounds were recorded.

In other words, the mortality of soldiers went down, but the recorded incidents of head wounds rose.