When weighing the alleged protective value of the parts of the picklehaube, consider that the body of the helmet itself was leather, not steel.
Always liked those “shoe brush” helmets that Roman soldiers wore, or were they merely invented for the movies?
Since they were leather, that would be not a Good Idea.
of course the hardened leather was somewhat protective.
Where you might have chainmail epaulets.
AFAIK, this was a British thing, although I’d welcome a countering citation.
[QUOTE=Peremensoe]
When weighing the alleged protective value of the parts of the picklehaube, consider that the body of the helmet itself was leather, not steel.
[/QUOTE]
While it’s definitely not steel, the pickelhaube was made of hardened leather, and that can be quite tough (think really hard plastic)
Yes, but the Germans had brass scales.
Yes, true- good vs swords and stuff, not against shrapnel, sadly.
Not all of these helmets had spikes. Many German artillery units had miniature cannon-balls on a stalk instead of a spike.
As for skewering people, I think Michael Caine might have been a one-off there,
in the Last Valley film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Valley_%281970_film%29.
I thought of this: the question concerns WWI, when sabres were somewhat out of date.
And the spiked helmet was also out of date. There were attempts to update it, but a totally new helmet design was adopted in 1916.
Some, yes, had thin brass scales, or silver, nickel-silver or gilt. None of which are really armour materials, but OK.
And that one sprouted two horns! Though, admittedly, very small…
They aren’t always full-sized jackets, such that you could actually wear it in the usual way. Some of them are stylized jacket-like affairs, so that they give the impression of wearing a full-sized jacket over one shoulder.
It may have started as just an ordinary jacket, but it came to take on a life of its own (in some cases.) Style and fashion are weird!
yes, that’s the word I couldn’t remember
that, too 
Not entirely… just search for “wwi cavalry”, and you’ll see a lot of people waving swords:
https://www.google.gr/search?q=wwi+cavalry&client=seamonkey-a&rls=org.mageia:en-US:unofficial&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT-4mtzOHKAhXLkSwKHblFCQQQsAQIIQ&biw=1024&bih=374
ok, they would probably never use them in real battles, but they didn’t know that at the beginning of the war
after all, imperial forces tend to stick in the old ways
and someone can search for “mongolian Helmet” and “persian Helmet”…
Wow! Those photos of men in gas masks riding horses and wielding lances strike me as totally bizarre!
(Wouldn’t the horses have needed gas masks too? What good is a lancer without his horse?)
scroll down:
GAS MASK FOR ANIMALS DURING WORLD WAR
and we forget (me included :rolleyes: ) that the French WWI helmet had a comb like part on top
even the unusual versions had this feature (see: http://s00.yaplakal.com/pics/pics_original/5/8/6/7142685.jpg)
