Seriously guys?
You serious you want to go into a trench with this stuff? I mean it feels good,
but you know what? My head's going to fall off here with this armour plate, and
have you tried shouldering a rifle with this thing?
It's...
You really can't do it.
Can I just get some grenades instead? Or machine gun?
Whew, I am really glad to have gotten that beast of a front heavy helmet off of my head.
That thing will ruin your neck if you're not used to wearing it.
I'm Ian by the way, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapon.com.
I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction house.
Normally, I'm looking at guns that they have for sale here, but today you know I happen to notice this thing
down in the lots that are for sale in this upcoming regional auction, and I thought, yeah, this is pretty cool.
You don't normally see this stuff floating around very often, so why not take a look at that?
I brought up as well a German stormtrooper's assault rifle from World War One.
This is the beginning of World War Two style fire and movement tactics with a shortened... the Karabiner 98 there.
Now this actually was not really used with this armour, but it just looked too cool for me not to pull one out.
At any rate, the Germans in World War One actually adopted this trench armour in 1916.
It was called the Grabenpanzer, sometimes called the Sappenpanzer.
So my understanding is these were primarily used for machine gunners.
This is the sort of thing that it's a little tricky to move around in a lot.
I'm sure some guys probably did wear this stuff on trench raids and the like,
but it's particularly useful if your job is sitting, say, behind a machine gun where everyone's going to be trying to kill you.
It's nice to have a little bit of extra protection on, and that's what this was intended for.
The German military purchased about 500,000 sets of this armour.
And now, ... in conjunction to this armour I also had on a German Stahlhelm
that had this additional extra thick front brow plate,
so the idea is this stuff protects you from the front and does nothing at all for the back.
The backside of this armour is non-existent. So again if you're sitting at a machine gun,
or, you know, face towards enemy kind of deal.
The US Army actually did some testing on this stuff after the war, and their conclusions,
their determination, was that this would pretty much stop a pistol bullet at close range.
It would only stop a rifle bullet once you had 300 to 500 yards of distance between you and the shooter.
Closer than that, rifle bullets will go straight through this. It did, of course, also protect from shrapnel and shell splinters.
And you know, artillery caused more casualties in World War One than rifle fire by a long shot,
so having a set of this armour if you're in a static position, probably not a bad idea.
It does give you a little bit of extra sense of comfort to wear that stuff around.
Let me bring the camera back, let's look at some of the markings on this and
... there are a few little details on it that are kind of cool.
So this is our set of armour, it's four articulated pieces.
We've got one main chest piece and then three scallops that go down the front of your belly and groin.
The idea is that this makes it a bit flexible, you can actually bend over with it, which is true.
Now if you have the helmet on without a ... chin strap the helmet will fall off the moment you bend over,
but the armour does not. You'll notice it does also have a throat protector here.
This is, in addition to giving a little bit extra protection up here,
it's also going to mean that shrapnel and things that hit, say in this area, when they ricochet up
they're not going to ricochet straight into, say, the throat of the person wearing it. This will deflect that sort of thing.
I think that's its main purpose.
Now let's flip this over and take a look at the back, because that's where a lot of the structural detail is.
Alright, looking at this on the back you can see how it's actually put together.
You can see we've got two buckles that are riveted onto the plate here.
And then there's a strap coming down from each one. There are felt pads in between each layer of plate,
and that's to prevent them from making a whole lot of noise.
Obviously with metal plate otherwise you're going to get a lot of ...
a lot of that sort of noise.
It's interesting to note that the felt is actually attached to the webbing straps and then these are tied on to the plates there.
On the top layer we have this back shoulder support is attached by three rivets on each side.
This particular style of armour is what's known as Type 1.
There were four types of the original armour, basically what they did is they started adding some hooks on the front.
Some references say those are to support, say, a sentry's rifle butt,
or perhaps the sling or other attachment for something like an MG 08/15.
At any rate, they attached a few hooks or straps. Some of them have little slots in the side
so that you can tie this around the back to help keep it stable.
At any rate, this is the most common version.
This is also the version that you can get reproductions of.
So I am not an expert in this type of material,
I don't have enough background with it to really discern between reproduction and actual authentic gear.
So you'll have to draw your own conclusions on this, however
I did want to point out that each one of these plates does have a set of markings on it
that appear to be correct and authentic. So right here, for example, a number, these three interlocking circles
are referenced in the literature as being a manufacturer mark from either Krupp or Essen.
And each one of the plates has a marking like that.
This particular one is kind of buried in the tarnish there, there you go, you can see it
there, a 52 under a triple circle and the letter K.
We do have that on...
We have that up here on the third scallop, and we also have it over on the side
right there, the side of the main plate.
So the helmet we have here is a typical German Stahlhelm,
but it has this extra, rather thick, this is almost a quarter inch thick, steel brow plate.
So this would this would do a really good job I suspect of deflecting bullets.
This is in fact significantly heavier material than the chest armour itself.
This would probably stop a rifle bullet much better.
And certainly because it is so rounded it would do a really good job of deflecting them.
So this is probably the most protective element of the whole thing.
And that sits on
(... this is obviously a reproduction plastic liner, which I'll tell you what, is really useful for actually wearing this helmet),
the helmet itself.
Pretty sure this one is an original helmet.
And of course the German Stahlhelm had these two kind of Frankenstein looking brackets on it,
which they use to attach this guy.
So these slot on and, just like a keyhole type of attachment,
drops into place just like that.
These slots are for a strap that goes around the back of the helmet and ensures that this doesn't fall off.
However, I'll tell you what, when you put this whole helmet on it's very front heavy as a result,
and you're going to get a neck workout from wearing this thing.
Still beats a bullet to the forehead though.
Well, thanks for tuning in guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
I know I had a really good time getting to tinker with some of this armour for a little while.
It is not the sort of thing that's floating around all over the place, even though they made so much of it originally.
Now there is reproduction armour on the market.
As I described, I think this is original armour that has had new straps and pads on it.
I'm not an expert in this material, so it is caveat emptor.
It's up to you guys to make sure that this is what you expect it is before you place a bid on it.
But tell you what, it would be pretty awesome to have a set of this in your own collection.
So of course this whole set (rifle not included),
is going up for auction at Rock Island at the end of June, and I have a link in the description below
to the catalogue page on Rock Island's website. You can take a look at their pictures and their
description and all the information they have on it.
And if you decide it's something that you just can't live without,
well you can go ahead and place a bid on-line and make it your own.
The rifle is also for sale, that's in a different lot.
I'll leave it up to you guys to look through the catalogue and find some of these Karabiner 98s.
Thanks for watching.