A Question about Pickelhaubes

The spike is a decorative feature (and originally, very early in its history, a defensive one). The force needed to drive it into an enemy's body is so great it makes a lousy weapon. I am sure people were killed by pickelhaube spikes in WWI when the wearer got caught in artillery fire, but high explosive is powerful enough to kill nearby people with flying beltbuckles, bone fragments and pieces of cutlery, too, so it's not exactly a feature.
 
AFAIK the spike was purely decorative, originally used to hold a plume for a parade dress. I never heard about someone killing anybody with it, but it should be theoretically possible, especially if the spike hit the throat. I can imagine that in a melee a soldier after looosing his rifle uses the spike of his helmet as a last chance weapon, but only in very close, hands-on-each-other-throat kind of combat. And certainly not with the helmet on his head.
But a vision of German infantry charging with their heads down and spikes forward like bull-style is quite entertaining.
 
It was probably used as an improvised weapon atleast once given the brutality of trench warfare but it was meant to be decorative.
 
The spike is a decorative feature (and originally, very early in its history, a defensive one). The force needed to drive it into an enemy's body is so great it makes a lousy weapon.
This, pretty much. The spike isnt even sharp, so not really viable.

Then again, adrenaline could make people do some unrational things in the heat of combat...
 
AFAIK the spike was purely decorative, originally used to hold a plume for a parade dress. I never heard about someone killing anybody with it, but it should be theoretically possible, especially if the spike hit the throat. I can imagine that in a melee a soldier after looosing his rifle uses the spike of his helmet as a last chance weapon, but only in very close, hands-on-each-other-throat kind of combat. And certainly not with the helmet on his head.
But a vision of German infantry charging with their heads down and spikes forward like bull-style is quite entertaining.
The spike was indeed purely decorative, and if I'm not mistaken for parades it was removed and a plume was placed in it's base. (so the spike itself didn't hold the plume)

If anyone is interested, this site has quite some information on Pickelhauben.
 
Well, Ecthelion did kill Gothmog the Balrog with a helmet spike...

ecthelion_gothmog.jpg
 
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