Earlier helmets in gunpowder warfare

I was wondering, is it possible for WW1 style helmets to be invented before 1900? I was just thinking that, since in gunpowder warfare head wounds are a problem, an earlier introduction might be beneficial.
 
Depends which kind of WWI helmet. The leather caps were pretty much useless, while the steel helmets required a lot of resources. What you really need for them is grenades. They were created not to deflect rifle shots (a head shot is an instant kill, no matter how awesome your helmet is), but to deflect light shrapnel from grenades, and artillery. So if you want to see helmets, have grenades continue to be used throughout the 1800s, instead of being reinvented in WWI.
 
I was wondering, is it possible for WW1 style helmets to be invented before 1900? I was just thinking that, since in gunpowder warfare head wounds are a problem, an earlier introduction might be beneficial.

Depends which kind of WWI helmet. The leather caps were pretty much useless, while the steel helmets required a lot of resources. What you really need for them is grenades. They were created not to deflect rifle shots (a head shot is an instant kill, no matter how awesome your helmet is), but to deflect light shrapnel from grenades, and artillery. So if you want to see helmets, have grenades continue to be used throughout the 1800s, instead of being reinvented in WWI.

Well, grenades were used as late as the mid-19th century (they were used in the Civil War), and shrapnel was used continuously. So neither of these is really what caused the reintroduction of the helmet. What really spurred the reintroduction of the helmet was two things...

1) The technology to mass produce them (ability to make huge quantities of steel and easily mass produce very thin sheets of it from which helmets could be stamped out) only came together in the last couple of decades of the 19th century.

2) Trench warfare in World War I...specifically, the hand-to-hand combat aspect of it during trench raids...introduced a new factor which had not existed before. It seems that men were using their entrenching spades (small, folding shovels, the edges of which could be sharpened, and which could be easily wielded as weapons in one hand) to cleave open each other's skulls, and these brutish things were cleaving through the soft hats and leather helmets being issued to the troops in 1914 like a warm knife through butter. Basically, it was almost a return to medieval hand-to-hand combat with battle axes. So they looked to a medieval solution...the helmet...to deal with it.

So the way to have helmets return earlier is to have a major war break out in the later 1880s or 1890s where trench warfare is practiced, and men use their entrenching spades in a similar manner. This is not at all out of the question. The period was filled with any number of crises which could have gone hot.
 
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Oh. I was hoping for civil war helmets. That would go along well with my..I mean my characters introduction of the Winchester 1866 in 1855.
 
Why did they quit using helmets? Early arquebusiers &c., used helmets. Just thinking of pictures i've seen, helmets were still in use into the 1500s. Maybe more reliable guns reduced the need of going hand-to-hand?
 

Stephen

Banned
Another aspect of trench warfare is that when standing in a trench the head is one of the places most likely to get hit by shrapnel or whatever.
 
The obvious answer then is to...

a) Introduce the factors that contributed to trench warfare earlier...

and...

b) Speed up the Industrial revolution


Part A should be relatively simple in allowing the Puckle Gun and Ferguson's breechloading rifle both to be developed in the late 1700's/early 1800's. Technology continues to advance along those lines giving you better repeaters and machineguns come the mid 19th century. Given that you already had pseudo-trench warfare in the ACW (Cold Harbor I believe?). Adding better repeaters should do the trick in getting full blown trench warfare by the mid 1800's.

Part B might be tougher. Perhaps an earlier steam engine? Bessemer process? I'm not sure exactly what would be needed here.
 
Why did they quit using helmets? Early arquebusiers &c., used helmets. Just thinking of pictures i've seen, helmets were still in use into the 1500s. Maybe more reliable guns reduced the need of going hand-to-hand?

Basically, the nature of hand-to-hand combat changed during the 17th century as the bayonet was introduced. You started seeing formations of pikemen disappear as bayonets were issued to the musketeers. With the pikemen disappeared the specialized swordsmen who were trained to deal with them (the Highlanders at Culloden were the among the last survivors of that particular type of soldier...the Highland targe and broadsword combination was originally developed as an answer to formations of pikemen). When these infantry swordsmen and their broadswords disappeared, most of the need for helmets also disappeared. Helmets aren't much use against bayonets, which are normally directed at the body rather than the head.

And while the cavalry still carried swords and could possibly inflict head wounds on infantrymen, infantry squares normally kept them at a distance, so very few such wounds actually occurred among the infantry (It is interesting to note that some types of cavalry...cuirassiers especially...continued to wear helments right through the 19th century and up into World War I, because they were the troops most likely to receive sword blows to the head).

Given that helmets basically all had to be made by hand, and at very high cost, before the last decades of the 19th century, and given the fact that the wounds they were worn to prevent rarely occurred after the middle of the 17th century, it was only natural that they were pretty much abandoned by the end of the 17th century.

It was only in World War I that the helmets got cheap to produce at the same moment that the type of wounds they were most effective in preventing started to make a reappearance on the battlefield.
 
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