The Great WW1 Helmet Mystery

at the beginning of World War one when the various civilized nations of the world went about killing each other with a new and frightening efficiency the various armies were equipped with cloth caps and the front of the the battle in Western Europe stagnated and men were standing around in trenches all day and meticulous records were kept of casualties and people noticed that an awful lot of head wounds were being recorded and it was considered after a while wise to issue the men with helmets and so they were this is the the British one the French also issued their men with helmets you may think that the Germans started with helmets began what in fact they don't those on those German helmets with spikes on top they were actually made out of leather and were largely ceremonial later they were replaced with a metal equivalent the French one was a little bit thin and flimsy for the British taste so they British designed their own one which was a fair bit thicker and stronger and this is it boringly called the Brodie helmet but it also had lots of more appealing names like the tin lid the Atkins hat the Tommy hat or my favourite the battle bowler and the men then had these on their heads as they stood around the trenches all day and you would think that that would help but something extraordinary happened it was noticed that almost immediately the number of men recorded with head wounds went up fivefold now why do you think that should be this is a bit of an intelligence test that I often put to people to see how well versed they are with statistics and science some people get it straight away other people just don't get it at all so maybe you can try it on your friends now at the end of this video I'll be giving you the answer now I've been high command they were saying Great Scott well the devil is going on we've issued these men helmets to save their lives and we just ended up making things worse are we in command of such idiots that they think they can put their heads about the parapet with impunity now does because we've given them some tin hats well one thinks they're enough the author must guard immediately the men must be forbidden from wearing hats but fortunately wiser heads prevailed and other people who understood statistics a bit better were able to point out what actually was going on and the men were allowed to keep their helmets okay here's the answer to the problem it was to do with statistics and the way people were listed in the hospitals you see what used to happen was a shell would land short throw a load of clods of Earth into the air these would rain down from a very great height onto people and kill them and those men would be listed as dead but instead after helmets were issued then they would land on the men and injure them they would then be listed as head wound and that's why there was a sudden massive increase in the number of head wounds recorded in the hospitals men who had previously been killed were being wounded in the head so in fact the helmets did quite a bit of good and they still wore them in World War two

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 864,880

Rating: 4.950357 out of 5

Keywords: ww1, wwi, helmet, brodie, issue, casualties, wounded, deaths, killed, head, wound, statistics, science, figures, records, hospitals, tin, battle, army, british, trenches, front

Id: 1IQE0uZUMys

Length: 3min 23sec (203 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 15 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the link. This guys whole page is a treasure trove of information. He really knows how to explain things well.