This hardly proves its effectiveness, except maybe its cost-effectiveness.
Actually, it does. The US Army spent millions designing the new helnet and armor. They would hardly pick a design that wasn’t effective in the majority of combat situations.
Such faith. Between “lowest bidder”, “the army we have rather than the army we want” and the demonstrable lack of foresight to design an army for the “combat situations” the US army actually finds itself in these days, it’s hardly such a given as you think.
I have a side question on WWII helmets:
We’ve all noticed how both German and British paratroopers had special helmets, more bowl shaped with minimal flange along the rim. For a while I thought you injure your neck or shoulder on landing or something. But it recently occured to me that it’s because the flanges catch the air. Is that right?
The helmet catching the air for some reason? No, not that I have ever noticed.
I read an account in a UK paper a while back where a veteran recalled that the British helmet could catch a blast and was more likely to flip back off your head or knock your head back if it was secured to your head.
I always kept my chin in on my chest. I liked to watch the plane fly away between my toes.
Here is a link to a web site that tested a Kevlar helmet against several popular-sized rounds of ammunition, both hand-gun and rifle. It shows that combat helmets are not designed to stop everything.
I have seen pictures of American tank driver helmets during WWII or Korea that look very similar to the German helmet, except lighter and with vent holes at the top) it gets hot inside of a tank). These tanker helmet designs appear to be based on old leather (American) football helmets. So this design may just be the best shape for general protection of the noggin and separate designers reached the same conclusion. Plus this design can easily accommodate headphones without compromising the fit.
So for the OP, all three provided basic protection. However I would say that the German design is the best of the three listed since it worked well and set the stage for many similar designs to follow over the next 88+ years. The Germans first started using that basic design during WWI to replace the expensive and difficult-to-make spike helmet that they used at the start of the war.
It’s the “lowest bidder” on a very tough set of specifications. Tougher than you’ll ever see for civilian markets. And the U.S. military, which happens to include my nephew* among “the best and the brightest”, is constantly working to prepare itself for the “next war”.
*This guy is incredible. If he stays in long enough, he will end up running the Air Force.
So you never did a rivet count then Paul? 
I can personally attest that a 174gr FMJ .303 British Mk VII SAA Ball round- fired from any of the Lee-Enfield family of rifles- will go straight through 1.5cm of solid steel at 100yds.
Which means that the German Coal-Scuttle Helmets would do bugger all against a direct hit from any of the Allied primary service rifle calibres (.303, .30-06, and 7.62x54R)- but as had been mentioned, any helmet is going to be of use against shrapnel, glancing blows, and the like.
We pretty much copied the German paratrooper’s kit initially, largely because they appeared to know what they were doing and nobody else knew much about the subject. Yes the old pot could have got flipped off by the airstream, not least because the chinstrap system was pretty rudimentary. The Americans don’t appear to have considered jumping with it either; they used leather flying-helmets or modified football helmets for the initial test units.
Some Allied bomber pilots would wear steel pot infantry helmets while flying, to protect them from flak. They had to cut earholes in the helmets so they could wear headsets with them.
I’ve read that a big reason for replacing the spike helmets was also that Allied snipers would take shots at the little spikes that would sometimes be visible poking above the trenchline. When they scored a sucessful hit, it was rather uncomfortable for whoever the helmet was attatched to.
That wasn’t as big a problem as was the fact that the body of the pikelhaube was leather. It might turn a sword blade but it didn’t do much for shrapnel. The spike (pikel) was removable and in the field it was generally removed and the leather body worn with field-grey cloth cover. Photos of the early months of WWI show British, French and German-Austrian front-line infantry soldiers wearing cloth hats. I’m not sure that the Russians ever did adopt a steel helmet in WWI.
In addition to Mk VII’s answer, my own assumption has been that the standard Infantry helmet could be seen as serving the same purpose as a construction worker’s hard hat – protection against nasty hard things falling from above (as Spavined Gelding mentions, prior to the First World War, the thinking was that since they couldn’t make a helmet that would stop a bullet, there wasn’t any point in having one. Once they got stuck into long-term trench warfare, though, they found that a significant number of casualties came from shrapnel, debris etc coming from above, so helmets were swiftly commissioned and issued).
A paratrooper’s helmet is more like a motorbike helmet, giving side and back protection against impact with a solid object, like the ground.
Like I say, this is more or less a guess on my part, but British motorcycle despatch riders did seem to wear the same helmets as the paras, so it makes sense.
The French Army (WWII) still had fairly elaborate helemts in 1940-and the Portuguese 9WWI) had something that looked medieval. Why the spartan look?
This is hardly cite material, but I have heard of a WWII soldier suffering non-serious grazing and concussion when a bullet penetrated his helmet, then was contained by it and buzzed around the perimeter between the helmet and his head.
Similar story in recent times from British soldiers in Northern Ireland and Bosnia. They both had shots fired at their heads, the bullets penetrated the helmets and left a score over the soldier’s head but no serious injury. The soldier shot at in NI recounted the smell of cordite afterwards.
My goodness no! (As the Secretary of Defense would say.)
Helmets are very important indeed. First off, there are lots of dangers in military life quite aside from the Bad Guys. Heads get bumped on armored vehicles, things fall onto soldiers, they walk into things, especially at night. The case can be made everyone should wear helmets when they drive civilian cars.
While many ‘threats’ (hot, sharp, fast-moving bits of metal) defeat helmets, many others do not. Lots of guys have found a really scary scrape on their helmets once things calmed down a bit. Had they not worn helmets, they would have been killed or wounded.
Even old-fashioned steel helmets quite a bit.
Heh, I’m the poster child for requiring people to wear helmets in libraries. I’m always knocking my head into shelves, table tops, etc. that it’s a wonder I even remember the Library of Congress shelving system. :rolleyes: