The human mind is always going to be innovative, even in the face of danger. The close relationship between wars and helmets is one that has always existed because on the one hand, wars could break out at any point and on another, there was the need to safeguard the life of those that go to the war front as the outcome of the war mostly is dependent on them. Helmets primarily came as a form of protection for heads, and even if they have advanced in recent times to extend to other facial features, the primary goal has never been lost. This consciousness arose when the realization hit that helmets could largely prevent traumatic brain injury that many soldiers suffered from.
The history of war and helmets is better discussed initially from the lens of war tools development. Different weapons have been used for warfare, and they include stones, spears, swords, bows and arrows, warships, catapult, shrapnel, siege gun, machine gun, and bomb. The battlefield is indeed not a safe place, but that still did not stop the development of helmets. Therefore, while war weapons were being developed with the application of technology, technology was also being used to create helmets that would be able to withstand the impact of the tools of war.
The history of helmets started from Brodie helmets and moved to M1 helmets. The helmets progressed from protection against swords and shrapnel to being a tool of protection against guns. Such helmets included ballistic helmets like Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops (PASGT), Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH), Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH), Integrated Head Protection System (IHPS) ballistic helmet. The helmets’ history also covers what helmets were made of; they had components like steel, nonmetallic steel, Kevlar fiber, ultra-high molecular weight polythene, etc. The parts largely dictated the helmets’ weight, and frankly, a ballistic helmet like IHPS weighs lesser than ECH.
The history of war and helmets go hand in hand as it is safe to state that without tools of war, the necessity of a helmet as a response to the harm always caused by those tools wouldn’t have reared its head.
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