Plate Armour - 20th Century and Modern Body Armour

20th Century and Modern Body Armour

Body armour made a brief reappearance in the American Civil War with mixed success. However, the armour vests of the time were expensive and thus bought by individual troops and not issued, meaning that the effectiveness of the armour varied widely depending on its maker. Plate armour was successfully implemented by Australian outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang, giving them a large advantage in their gunfights against police. The cavalry armour of Napoleon, and the French, German, and British empires (heavy cavalry known as cuirassiers) were actively used through the 19th century right up to the first year of World War I, when French cuirassiers went to meet the enemy in armour outside of Paris. During the war both sides experimented with shrapnel armour and some soldiers used their own but dedicated ballistic armour such as the American Brewster Body Shield was not widely produced.

In 1916 General Adrian of the French army provided an abdominal shield which was light in weight (two pounds) and easy to wear. It was made of an oblong plate of metal bent in a curve and moulded somewhat to the abdomen, hip and groin guards were added to the abdominal shield. General Adrian devised a breastplate which joined the abdominal defence which was also provided with a gorget. About three thousand of these defences which weighed about five and a half pounds were made and they were given practical tests.

During World War I, a number of British officers recognized that many casualties could be avoided if effective armor were available. Isolated efforts at developing armor were made, and soldiers could make individual purchases or efforts, but there was no armor issued to the troops. As it is today, issues of weight, cost, availability of materials and/or environmental stability complicated the issue of developing armor that would also be effective. For example, soft armor made of silk was tried on a small scale based on Japanese designs, but this material did not last well under the harsh environmental conditions.

The first usage of the term “flak jacket” refers to the armour originally developed by the Wilkinson Sword company during World War II to help protect Royal Air Force (RAF) air personnel from the flying debris and shrapnel thrown by German anti-aircraft guns' high-explosive shells (flak itself is an abbreviation for the German word "Fliegerabwehrkanone" (anti-aircraft gun)). The idea for the flak jacket came from Col. Malcolm C. Grow, Surgeon of the US Eighth Air Force in Britain. He thought that many wounds he was treating could have been prevented by some kind of light armor. In 1943 he was awarded the Legion of Merit for developing the flak vest.

Unfortunately, flak jackets proved to be too bulky for wear within the confines of the RAF's standard bomber aircraft, the Avro Lancaster. The Royal Air Force subsequently offered the jackets to the United States Army Air Forces, which adopted them as a Defense Standard.