Reeder and I were discussing an article I found in my local paper about a 70 year old man who, when he underwent bypass surgery, was discovered to have scar tissue from a bullet passing thru both left and right atrium. In the story it mentioned that the other 6 bullets that had been fired at him had been deflected by his bullet proof vest. Reeder said bullet proof vests didn’t exist during the Korean War.
Here are 2 cites to that story:
link 1
(which is the verbatum story from my paper) and
Lets reflect about how large the heart is, and now lets think about poking two .27 inch holes in it. He would have bled out. I need to go check the medical jounrals for this to be sure.
Here is an “Armored Vest Fact Sheet”, dated 1952, from the Quartermaster Corp. It covers the state of the art re armored vests at the time, and mentions that several thousand were used in Korea.
While it was fairly effective at stopping schrapnel/fragments, it was apparently much less so with small arms fire.
this is purely what I recall hearing, so take it for that value alone (someone come along and confirm this?) that the Chinese and North Koreans wore many thick coats due to the cold and such. Some American soldiers carried a light weight carbine instead of a full rifle…
I once heard that the carbine had a difficult time penetrating the many layers the Chinese and North Koreans wore. True?
Yes. The m1 (and m2) carbines fired a souped up .30 cal pistol cartridge. It’s effect could be diminished by heavy clothing at oblique angles.
Also: My guess is that the guy is refering to a flak jacket, but I didn’t read the article. They were commonly worn by vehicle crews and guys that didn’t do a whole lot of moving… They weren’t bullet proof, but they could stop a low powered bullet, especially at high angles.
From my own personal experience of putting a .30 cal brass jacketed round through a 5 inch thick oak tree I’d have to say the Chinese needed a good bit of luck and a very oblique angle to go along with those heavy clothes. My father owns a surplus M-1 carbine (WWII vintage - it was made by General Motors!) and we have done some target shooting with it, including the aforementioned oak tree incident (the bullet passed through the thickest part of the trunk) and I found the weapon to be wickedly accurate at short range and very reliable. When I first heard stories of Chinese coats stopping M-1 rounds I had trouble believing them, but apparently it did occasionally happen.
Slightly off topic… but the main drawback I have heard about the carbine in Korea was that during the very cold Korean winter, it had small parts and would sieze up very easily, and it was so light weight and brittle that it was also not much use as a club.