Bombsuit - History

History

Modern day EOD units had their beginnings in World War II, when the German Luftwaffe greatly increased the number of bombs dropped on British soil. As the number of civilian casualties grew due to delayed explosion of bombs, which had often penetrated several feet into the ground after being dropped from planes, men were trained to defuse the unexploded devices and groups were dedicated try to keep up with that task. As fuse designs changed, more of these early UXD (unexploded device) soldiers died until more successful means to defeat a new design were developed.

As the United States saw its likely involvement in World War II, they requested help from the British to train a civilian EOD force that could defuse unexploded bombs in urban areas. The human cost of learning the variety of fuses and how to defeat them was lower for the U.S. due to this education. After it became clear that EOD tasks were best handled by the military, the U.S. tried several ways to organize EOD personnel that would allow for the need for both specialized training and diverse deployment.

In photos of early missions to defuse unexploded bombs, the men are not wearing any protective gear. In fact, they are often shirtless to cope with the heat generated by the manual labor of digging around the devices before they could be defused. Basically, the individual defusing the bomb succeeded - or failed with fatal results.

The first EOD suits consisted of Kevlar type material and/or armor plates made of metal or fiber-reinforced plastic. Their purpose was to protect the wearer from penetrating injuries by fragments from an exploding device. In the mid 1990’s, research showed that these materials alone were not effective against the blast wave itself, which can cause blast lung and other potentially deadly internal injuries. Modern EOD suits have layers of Kevlar, plating, and foam to provide protection from both fragments and the blast wave itself.

The threats posed by an Improvised Explosive Device, commonly known as an IED, can also include chemical or biological agents. This has led to significant advancements since 1999 in the design of bomb disposal suits and helmets. For example, a modern bomb suit may address both conventional blast threats and chemical/biological agents by incorporating a chemical protective undergarment and a helmet compatible with a Self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA)

Recently, the U.S. National Institute of Justice supported a program to develop a national testing standard for EOD suits so that the protection afforded by a given suit can be described in a standard way. The goal is to have a means to compare the performance of different designs with each other and with expected threats, similar to the NIJ standards that are widely used to test and compare body armor or materials used to stop ballistic threats.

Developers must consider more than just protection, since a person must work on a stressful task that also requires fine motor skills while wearing a bomb suit. Other factors that must be considered include

• cushioning the spine and head in case the wearer is knocked over by a blast
• thermal heat protection
• freedom of motion to work efficiently
• maximum weight restrictions
• rapid removal, such as for emergency medical treatment
• defogger performance to prevent the helmet visor from clouding