What was the best designed and most effective combat helmet of WWII?

What was the best designed and most effective combat helmet of WWII?

Not just the ones pictured but out of all of the nations involved.

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youtube.com/watch?v=oKvX8_nbD-Y&t=327s
youtube.com/watch?v=hdqOhqSu7o0&
youtube.com/watch?v=oYsbDAWRC5g
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Bumping

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Veeky Forums is slow. You don't need to bump every few minutes. As for your question: Steel pot, the helmet which every modern design is based on.

Stahlhelm?
It's not like the answer is obscure.

Best designed asthetic wise m15 adrian or pickelhaube if you count it as WW1 instead of napoleonic

The Stahlhelm, which covered the entire head and not just the area above the ears.

The M1 comes in as a good contender.

>pickelhaube
>What was the best designed and most effective combat helmet of WWII?
>WWII
>pickelhaube

Stahlhelm was replaced by the Germans themselves after ww2. They cited numerous defects.

>Best designed asthetic wise m15 adrian or pickelhaube
ingen

I personally like the Fallschirmjager Stahlhelm

inb4 bicycle helmets

The British MkIII was the best designed steel helmet of the war.

The problem with steel helmets is that, contrary to media portrayals, they will rarely/never stop rifle rounds, as they are far too thin, and were designed to protect against falling debris and shrapnel. However, some steel helmets were capable of stopping pistol calibre rounds at certain angles. The Stahlhelm and the M1 featured large vertical or near vertical front and side faces, making them almost useless against even small calibre pistol rounds, and even some particularly high velocity shrapnel.

The MkIII on the other hand, being very similar in design to the famous M1956 East German steel helmet, provided a much better angle for protection against smaller calibre shot coming from a 90 degree angle, such as you might expect in CQC, building clearing, trench clearing etc. This is in addition to them being significantly wider brimmed than their German and American counterparts, similar to the Brodie, giving greater shoulder and neck protection from vertical threats.

Most people/Americans will argue 'hurr the PASGT/ECH looks like the stalhelm its gotta be the best' without realising that there are modern helmet designs that do not follow that pattern, and most importantly, the considerations in designing a kevlar or plastic helmet are extremely different to those involved in designing a steel helmet. Steel is much heavier, limiting thickness, has far less shock absorbing capacity, is far more prone to stress weakening etc. You cannot simply equate one design with another without considering their composition being completely different.

All in all, when designing steel helmets, the MkIII/M1956 design pattern (single pressed shell, wide brim, shallow sloped faces with no contours) is about as generally effective as you can get in a mid 20th cent. combat environment.

This

The Swiss win again

you can't win what you've never fought

You win by default, Satan.

looked goofy af tho

stalhelm with all the problems fixed

We can all agree that the Adrian helmet was the worst right?

Here are the ballistic test videos of an M40 Stahlhelm vs the M1956 so people can see the difference:

M40: youtube.com/watch?v=oKvX8_nbD-Y&t=327s (gets penetrated by a 9mm)
M1956: youtube.com/watch?v=hdqOhqSu7o0& (stops both 9mm and .45)

Note that I'm not saying the MkIII has exactly the same properties as the M1956, all I'm saying is the design is very good for steel constructed helmets, better than all the other mass produced alternatives (M1, Adrian, ssh-40 etc).

Also FUCK the character limit.

Good post.

Although not as effective as later designs of course, the Brodie helmet is my favourite simply for aesthetic reasons. I'm no expert on helmets, can some one tell me if there was a difference in WW1 Brodies and WW2 ones? I thought I remembered that the WW1 Brodie design was wider, though I could be wrong.

>Also FUCK the character limit.
Oh please nigger, you know damn well that if full dissertations were allowed to be posted you cunts would abuse the ever living FUCK out of it within 3 minutes

>Oh please nigger, you know damn well that if full dissertations were allowed to be posted you cunts would abuse the ever living FUCK out of it within 3 minutes

Tbh I just wish it was 3k, like Veeky Forums, not 2k.

>I'm dead, but at least I didn't look goofy

Bump

kek

No shit. Still best of the helmets used.

Every helmet used in WW2 was replaced after WW2. Therefore they are bad helmets.

>go to a war museum
>see a stahlhelm
>there were about 17 bullet holes (counted them) and about a quarter of the helmet was missing
>mfw a human being had to go through that

Probably not. It wasn't uncommon to use looted helmets for target practice.

i hope you're right

This, or it could have been used as a decoy to draw opposing marksmen into giving themselves away.

Agreed.

>Germans
>human beings

What about things like
That address some of the shortcomings of the stahlhelm or things like the Romanian helmet that resisted similarly well to the m1956 and is referenced in the videos here: ?

>like the Romanian helmet
I think it's this one.

Bump

It was based on a design bought from the Dutch company Verblifa in 1938. It was a very good choice.

What's peoples opinion on the Vz32? imo it's Veeky Forums as fuck but I can see that it would be shit in reality

looks like the poles prewar helmet

/aesthetic/

oooh edgy

aloha snackbar, my smelly schnitzel friend

that would be the brodie senpai

The French Adrian is the most aesthetic helmet in history

I personally believe it's the M1 helmet. Worn with a liner that uses the original style of suspension makes it cover as much of the head as the Stahlhelm and since it's rounded with no flat sides, it's very good at deflecting shrapnel.

>it's rounded with no flat sides
In what way is it 'rounder' than other helmets? Because the lowest part of the helmet seems quite vertical to me, while the stahlhelm has a certain angle at the lowest parts

Stalhelm, Krauts may be trying to destroy Western Civilization half the time, but their engineering feats are like no other.

>They cited (((numerous defects)))

You mean butthurt over Nazi war crimes

Hell, when DARPA was developing the PASGT system in the 70s, the Army was still hesitant to issue them because they were afraid US soldiers would "look like Nazis". A contributing factor to why it was only just beginning to be issued when the US invaded Lebanon in 1982.

Performed like shit tho

They even called it the fritz helmet kek. Lives were literally wasted because they didn't want to look like Germans

>Lives were literally wasted because they didn't want to look like Germans

Ironic, considering how much the Americans wish they were like the Wehrmacht.

>when DARPA was developing the PASGT system in the 70s, the Army was still hesitant to issue them because they were afraid US soldiers would "look like Nazis".
See:

>Stalhelm
It was shit

Statistically speaking the difference between any 2 helmets of WW2 was/is negligible, if the statistics provided by the Germans and Allies are reliable.

To be fair, looking like Wehrmacht would be a huge problem in an actual combat situation.
>confusion of battle
>see stahlhelm
>shoot

are you that butthurt brodie fanboy?

Nothing prevented them to look like Germans after the war ended though

It was replaced after the war with a better performing model of helmet, none of the other ones were.

What's your point? Everything is tactically sound

If you honestly believe the reason the other designs were kept (they weren't) because they performed better than the stahlhelm then you're beyond retarded

Except for the Adrian and type 90, all the other helmets could deflect pistol shots from the front. Stalhelm is the only one that gets reliably penned.

1. I'd like to see some citations on that
2. Helmets were intended to stop shrapnel, not direct hits from bullets
3. you can make any helmet bullet proof by adding more material, doesn't say anything about the design

> that filename.

>doesn't say anything about the design
The front was nearly flat doofus. Read the thread for citations, an user already posted videos from a channel that runs tests on a lot of ww2 helmets.

Now fuck off wehraboo

see

That is a really nice helmet

>The front was nearly flat doofus
Same goes for other helmets. Still, if you think that stopping bullets at the front is what decides what is a good helmet and what is not, then you're pretty retarded.
protip; the front of the brodie could stop pistol rounds, and guess which helmet design was also the most retarded in WWII
>i got a piece of metal through the temple, but at least my forehead is protected from pistol rounds!

>using a youtuber as a source
ayyy

>using a youtuber doing ballistic tests on actual examples as a source

Yes please

ayyyy go listen to whatever pseudoscience you want to instead of watching actual ballistic tests, im litterally lmaoing @ ur life

I intend to take academic sources more seriously than an amateur with a gun in his backyard.
Meanwhile you're completely ignoring the rest of my post

>Same goes for other helmets.
No, other helmets are more rounded giving them better deflecting properties. As to your point about shrapnel, its noted but irrelevant. However since ignoring it hasn't appeased you and instead led you to believe you have a point I will address it.

Shooting shaped projectiles at measurable standard speeds is a reasonable way of testing combat resistance of armor. Yes the armor was made with the idea of deflecting shrapnel which moves at various irregular speeds but the fact that it can deflect actual bullets at 10 yards should impress you just as much and actually tells you how much force it can potentially deflect.

>I intend to take academic sources more seriously than an amateur with a gun in his backyard.
Oh harumpf good sir indeed.

>No, other helmets are more rounded giving them better deflecting properties
Can you please provide data with 'roundness' for each WWII helmet because this is pure speculation. I barely see a difference between the 'roundness' of an M1 and a stahlhelm.

>As to your point about shrapnel, its noted but irrelevant
Why. Shrapnel probably killed more soldiers than bullets but i'm too lazy to look up the statistics

>but the fact that it can deflect actual bullets at 10 yards should impress you just as much and actually tells you how much force it can potentially deflect.
That would be impressive if shrapnel on average had the same penetration power as bullets. My point is that low caliber bullet resistance is a poor parameter to rate helmets of that time. Otherwise you would come to the conclusion that the brodie would be better than a stahlhelm, or that the Germans were extremely retarded to abandon pic related that pretty much stopped everything.
Also, i highly doubt that allied helmets were able to stop a direct hit from a K98 which was the standard rifle used by the Germans

youtube.com/watch?v=oYsbDAWRC5g
Here's a youtuber explaining multiple times why the Stahlhelm was the best design in WWI and probably also in WWII
Where's your god now?

>the best design in WWI
I agree. The mk1 was specialized and Adrian was just an all around outdated design.

Ian doesn't even know he's holding an LWH instead of a PASGT, he doesn't even get the abbreviation right and instead says PAGST. Sorry, but there clearly wasn't enough research done in that video.

>I barely see a difference between the 'roundness' of an M1 and a stahlhelm.
Well you're lying or blind.

?

The back of the M1 is a little steep, but still has enough roundness to it for deflecting fragmentation.

>That would be impressive if shrapnel on average had the same penetration power as bullets.
Shrapnel is just fragmentation thrown out by an exploding bomb or shell and varies considerably in speed and force. Bullets are just more practical for testing and ultimately tell you more.

We are in a 3d world my friend

I really don't see a significant difference, they're both oval shaped and quite vertical at the front and back.
At least the lowest part of the stahlhelm has a certain angle to it

>I can see that it would be shit in reality
Why? Looks pretty standard to me.

M1 wasnt very good either.

Stahlhelm looks more circular.

So we can all agree the brodie was a better design than the stahlhelm?

Don't know about the brodie but the mk3 was.

>The stahlhelm is completely flat at the front, the M1 is rounded
>Vertical slopes don't count
>It wasn't a good helmet either
>It looks a bit more circular

The civilian kind, which didn't exist because the civilians didn't have to go get shot at and blown up. Yes, best to stay away from war zones and night clubs.

>every user I talk to is the Same user

I'm M1 isnt that good.

The British helmet, while looking goofy, served its purpose.

It was designed to cover as much of your head as possible from artillery shrapnel and debris.

Tilt your head down and pull it over your face a little and it will stop you from getting bits of metal blown into your skull.

That being said, it wasn't very good at stopping a direct bullet but that wasn't the point of it.

It was garbage.

Stalhelm design was universally considered the best design during and after the war. It became the basis for all modern helmets thereafter.

I was mainly thinking of WW1 without realising the thread was for WW2 helmets.

It was objectively the best in WW1 for trench warfare and the major role of artillery.

This is pretty accurate, covers most points.

Guy on the right Bela lugosi?

>It became the basis for all modern helmets thereafter.
No it did not just most NATO countries and their imitators

Did it though? The Bundeswehr adopted a copy of the US M1, the British used the Mk IV, a development of the Mk III "turtle" helmet.

And then you have all the little guys who copied America

Fuck I'm retarded. I thought he said WWI

>just most NATO countries and their imitators
Uh, no. The M1 steelpot is the basis for most NATO helmets. The "hurr it looks like a stalhelm" thing is a meme, because none of them really do.