Helmets - Not Only About Protection

[Music] ciao ragazzi let's talk about headwear in warfare and now I'm not going to talk about the fez specifically but I'm talking about hats and helmets in general ok so all of these things that I'm putting on are things that you might have found on various historical battlefields at various times winston churchill were one of these bombay bowler that's known by stu type of soul of topi or pith helmet and you will notice that all of them sit on my head ok and the reason I'm making this video is actually it stems from the Fez got attached to my Salo there it stems from the videos that I have done in the past talking about the old Sally or Robocop helmet as some people like to call it so let's just stick this on and I'll keep this on for most of the video I would think so when I put this on previously or in one of the videos I had this on in together with my Brigantine and I think I have my mouth shirt on with it as well now some people made the comment in that video but isn't your throat exposed isn't your chin exposed aren't your arms are closed no they focused on the fact that with this style of helmet yes indeed the lower half of my face is exposed and and what indeed with this type of helmet we often wear what's called a bevor ok but this isn't a video about Bevis this isn't a video talking about types of chin protection this is a video talking about types of head protection worn in war and the fact that if you're wearing any type of helmet whether it's a World War One or World War two steel helmet or indeed if we're going back into the 19th century and you're wearing things like this type of helmet or if we go back to the 17th century and European christed or or something and you're wearing this type of helmet then all of those things primarily are there to protect the top of your head now obviously in different periods you're going to be facing different types of opponent with with different types of weapons coming at you okay now clearly if you're in an environment where people are gonna be swinging long swords and war hammers at you you probably want a fairly serious type of helmet like the one I'm wearing here if you're in an environment where primarily you're going to be shot at with bullets but occasionally you're going to get into a bit of a scrap then you might find that one of these types of helmets is a better option because this primarily is not really to necessarily protect your head from things like swords although I'll talk about that in a second because of course as we well know often they did encounter swords like this but again I'll come back to that in a second the purpose of this helmet primarily is to stop your bumping your head on things and if we go to the First World War which is when the mass reintroduction of helmets in modern warfare happened remember at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century most militaries were sending their soldiers to war not in helmets actually bit in hats they were wearing soft types of kepi and all sorts of different neo shows and all sorts of not Shaco so much by that point but different types of patrol hat essentially but soft material fabric hats which don't really protect your head from anything but they make you look smart they give you somewhere to to aid recognition on the battlefield in terms of what the regiment or unit you're from and of course they protect your head to some degree from the Sun and from cold weather and rain and stuff like this but most of all I think it was about looking good in your uniform and for identification purposes this type of helmet is quite interesting because the so-called foreign service helmet which this is a kind of modern replica of they came in from far more practical reasons in the British well not just British in fact in various European and non-european militaries these were born famously by the British anyone who's seen the movie Zulu or the man who would be king this type of thing will know these types of how it's they're quite electronically British in the modern mindset but actually these modern replicas are made in Vietnam and are actually modeled on French ones okay so so the the French War exactly the very similar types of helmets just a slightly different shape the Germans had helmets like this the Italians had helmets like this and the Americans had helmets at this as well and obviously the other parts of the British Empire so Canada Australia New Zealand so on so these were actually quite a widespread tough helmet and they weren't primarily just for uniform purposes they were actually practical and they are called pith helmets sometimes and always known by that historically but these days most people call them pith helmets because they're made of pith or Cork and which is very absorbent but also very light and you could soak it in water it protect you from the Sun keep you cool this kind of thing but additionally it does protect you from bumping your head now you may think well who cares if you bump your head well that was why they reintroduced primarily why they reintroduced helmets in the First World War was because people were getting a huge number of head injuries the steel helmet doesn't necessarily protect you from from a shell going off next year but but it does protect you from some bits of flying shrapnel potentially a ricochet bullet although direct bullet will go straight through it but mostly from you just bashing your head on things and people really underestimate how easy it is to put someone out of action by them going along a trench and standing up at the wrong moment and hitting their head into a beam and knocking themselves out and getting concussion and so actually the primary purpose to sticking helmets on soldiers and into that Lee modern builders or cyclists or this kind of thing is to protect your head from bumping on things okay it's not necessarily straight from from weapons but I said I would come back to this and I would these types of helmets were introduced primarily to protect from the elements from the Sun and stuff but they were often augmented with a turbine around the around it particularly in British service so in India and Afghanistan a turbine known as a pack or a or Pogue or E which is essentially silt like a silk scarf twisted around wrapped around here and that provides some better degree of cut resistance from from how and that was a that was inspired by Sikh head wear turbans and not just seeking fact just indian head wear and they noted of course that these twisted silk head head scarves were very good at resisting cuts because very difficult to cut through silk and it's got a lot of shock absorbency so when you combine this with a pug Orie it actually provides quite a lot of cut resistance but back to there goes the helmet back to the Sally so people go on about the fact that all but the face and the throat are exposed yes they are yes you could wear a male chainmail standard to protect the throat which I usually would or you could wear a bevor but there are some disadvantages to that aren't there so why did most soldiers throughout history wear helmets that basically only protected the top of their heads and very often left their face uncovered and that is true it's true for a large part if you think about a Roman helmet it protects the cheeks but primarily it checks that protects the top and the back of the head okay similar of lots of ancient Greek helmets yes we have the famous Corinthian helmets which do protect the face more but they still have eye and nose openings which frankly if you're holding a sword or a spear it's not that difficult to thrust through those gaps probably those face openings are more to protect from missile weapons rather than hand weapons because if you're that close to someone it's not so difficult okay you could say if you're wearing that helmet and you see a thrust coming in by turning it slightly yeah you could protect your face so it is an advantage having a face protection no question but it comes at a cost why would so many helmets throughout history whether it's the ancient world the medieval world the renaissance world or the Industrial Age why would they all leave the face and very often the sides of the head as well uncovered well very simply because humans need to do more than just be hit okay they need to breathe see hear talk eat okay loads of things which it is incredibly difficult to do with certain types of helmets on even to the point you notice this hell it it has a visor okay it has a pivoting visor now I'm wearing it up as I inevitably would do you do see versions of these Sally's which the visor doesn't isn't mobile and you can't lift it up and down and what they basically do if you look in the artwork you see a lot of soldiers wearing these like that okay so they've got they've got little vision slip up it's lift up here but instead they push the helmet back on the head and they're walking around they're doing their shooting their crossbows or using their heads using their pikes I mean you could even strap this background here and keep it secure like that but you'll notice the shape at the back of the helmet enables me to do that and I'm sure that that was part of the design of this helmet because fundamentally let's take that off now fundamentally the the helmet was there for you to wear on your head to protect you from essentially mostly incidental hits okay things that come in and hit you on the head that you weren't really expecting or you didn't see coming yeah absolutely in close combat you could bring that down and it would provide a bit more protection to you but remember that if you have something that covers the entire face you now you can't hear as well you can't be heard as well you can't give commands or relay messages to your buddies fighting next to you you tell them that you're wounded or that you need to step back or that you're being attacked from the flank and quickly to really reform the line in a different direction breathing major you know if you're standing in line you might not be engaged in single combat but if you're standing the line trying to hold the line or even you know maneuvering around on the battlefield essentially what it's like a giant rugby scrum because you're all pushed against each other you're trying to stand your feet you're trying not to fall over you're wearing all this equipment the ability to see and to breathe is so so important okay and the minute that you lower your your visor on the typical helmet and you're limited to this I can't see my hands here okay I can't see what my hands are doing I can only see my hands at this level if I want to see my hands here I have to look down there and I now can't see the camera up here okay so vision slots on whatever type of helmet you're wearing unless it's so perforated that it doesn't provide any real protection against things like arrows vision slits do restrict your vision significantly okay same thing with that type film where you could say even more so with those more protective sort of Nights type helmets so the simple fact is that these types of helmets which just protect the top of your head are like that because the majority of your soldiers who are not nights put this helmet down the majority of your soldiers who are not Knights what you really need them to do is be soldiers and what does soldiers spend most of their time doing they spend most their time marching around maneuvering around standing in large formations and doing what a unit needs to do entrenching laying siege to things and doing all of the human bodily functions that they need to do to operate as a soldier as I say talking listening and seeing eating breathing and those things are what you spend 99.9 percent of your time doing and needing to be able to do as soon as you add full facial protection you're turning that soldier into a very specific role and even if we go back to the hoplite tail Corinthian style helmets with the facial with the facial coverings at the front they're often in artwork we see them worn exactly like I showed with the saala up on the top of the head in a sort of more casual role so an actual in fact without having a visor per se what they've essentially done is they've invented a helmet much like the Salle a that can be quickly put down to protect the face or lift it up to expose the face and we have to remember that many helmets within the light for example the Illyria star hammock within that period did have open faces they didn't have closed faces and certainly many of the other nationalities in the world at that time and the Etruscans and and various other people around the goals and various other groups we're using open face helmets predominantly okay so really it doesn't matter what period we're talking about the majority of helmets in history used by the common the most common types of fighting man the common soldier whether they be pikemen or Aquabus years or crossbowman longbowmen Billman halberdiers whatever okay those types of core soldiers whether you're looking at the Bayeux Tapestry or whether you're looking at the conquest of south america or whether you're looking at whether you're looking at the wars in rome you know during the civil wars or whichever period the majority of helmets predominantly protect the top and the back of the head and leave the face relatively open obviously to varying degrees relatively open so next time you look at a person in medieval armor and you say oh but that only covers some of the head it leaves it leaves the throat it leaves the mouth exposed yeah that's very true but so do most helmets okay and that there's a very very good reason for that and any of you who own a helmet or or can borrow one I recommend you to spend a day doing stuff with a helmet on and remember that lots of soldiers would have been encouraged to keep their helmets on a lot of the time you could say are but you could just you could have a helmet with facial protection you could just take the helmet off well no because if you're on the March or if you're moving around and doing patrols and you know it's kind of even if it's barracks duties or garrisoning a fort or whatever you need to have your helmet on that's part of your uniform it's part of your equipment it's part of what protects you against just being able to be taken out by someone with a rock from behind but additionally where are you going to leave it it's not a convenient easy thing to carry it's a valuable piece of equipment that's probably been given to you by the government or your command or whoever's in charge okay so your job is to wear that helmet and you're going to spend all day wearing that hell okay you might think well I'm not going to do the chinstrap up that's really uncomfortable if you don't have a raisable visor you're gonna go well I'm gonna wear my helmet like that so that you know I can breathe and I can see I'm not getting too hot and this kind of stuff I've now got I can hear better now I've got better peripheral vision I can talk I can eat I can do my job and if someone wants to like attack me from behind I've still got a steel helmet on okay or bronze helmet or whatever your helmets made of so there we go next time you look at a medieval armor and think oh I can see a gap there and I can see a gap there yeah that's fine okay if you're fighting someone is single come combat that's going to be a lot of what you're thinking about is where are those gaps how can I get to them how can I thrust my weapon deep into that person and end them rightly okay but when you're thinking about the practicality of a an armor or a uniform or equipment don't only think about it in a tournament or hand-to-hand combat context think about it in their day-to-day context what does a soldier do and is that armor practical for them to do all of their normal soldier duties while wearing it remember that the kind of people that we would call Knights the men terms the heavily fully armored guys didn't do a lot of that stuff they literally they were the heavy brigade they just turned up for the big for the big battle or for the tournament to do their thing in their full armor most of the common soldiers doing most of the common soldier jobs couldn't have done their common soldier jobs in that full heavy all-encompassing armor it wouldn't have been possible it wouldn't have been practical and anyway I hope that gives you a different way to look at whether you're looking it from a history and archeology point of view or whether you're looking it from a reenactment or living history or lot point of view or indeed if you're doing gaming of some sort you know whether it's tabletop like role-playing games or even computer gaming think about the fact of what would you want to or what could you bear to wear on a daily basis and still go about your soldierly or everyday tasks while still wearing it and then you'll start to look at armor in a very very different way I hope that's been somewhat useful and interesting cheers folks and see you for the next video arrivederci thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 89,056

Rating: 4.9728017 out of 5

Keywords: medieval helmets, roman helmets, greek helmets, armour, armor, pith helmets, conquistador

Id: pHTNy_6kM9M

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 10 2018