Russian body armour?

[Hans]

Found this photo

http://home.earthlink.net/~lithuanian16thrd/_wsn/page3.html

of Razvedchiki troops wearing what appears to be be steel sheet 'body armour" ...grogs?

[Engel]

Can't say much about the specific armour (and I lack the grog title anyway), but body armors of various types were experimented on in WW2, but were discarded on the grounds of being too heavy, uncomfortable and yet unable to provide adequate protection. Only the development of synthetic materials of sufficient strength resulted in a body armour useful to infantry, and not just stationary positions (the M52 vest used in Korea being one of the first useful ones).

[ May 02, 2003, 06:09 AM: Message edited by: Engel ]

[Fishu]

I haven't ever heard of any extensive use of body armour, simply because those weren't suitable for moving around without too much hassle.

To stop a rifle caliber bullet, you'd need too thick plate of steel armour to protect yourself, to be able to carry it for far.

you don't get much at all protection with 6mm armour.

Could protect from SMG, but rifle would slice & dice it at will.

However, I've heard of soviets covering MG gunners with body armour, to an extent where AT-rifles were found to be useful at sniping them.

So I suppose it was rather commonly done when multiple types of ATRs are mentioned of being used against these.

[Engel]

Many Soviet MG's had "gun shields", so the ATR's might have been used to punch through that to kill the gunner, not so much the prevalence of actual body armour.

[Fishu]

Engel,

I've read about gunners having body armour as well in rather many cases, considering it's been bothered to be mentioned.

The shields has been separately mentioned and most definately isn't body armour :>

[YankeeDog]

Even modern body armor has a very hard time stopping a rifle bullet. The better modern vests can stop an AK-47 bullet (which is somewhat less powerful than a WWII era 7.62mm round), but it's by no means a sure thing, and whether or not the round penetrates depends a lot on the range and where it hits on the vest, etc.

When looking at the effectiveness of body armor, it's important to remember that in general, and especially in WWII, far more infantry casualties were caused by relatively low velocity shrapnel projectiles from various types of exploding ordnance than were caused by small arms bullets.

Even WWII era 'flak vests' were pretty effective at stopping this kind of projectile. In fact, they're called 'flak vests' because they were originally used by allied air crews flying the bombing missions over Germany. Needless to say, the aluminium skins of the bombers didn't provide much protection for the crews from flak, so the extra protection was much needed. Bomber crews also don't spend a lot of time running around inside the plane, so the extra weight was less of an issue.

These flak vests were thought to be much too heavy for infantry to wear, though, so AFAIK they were never used by groundpounders or even AFV crews in the ETO.

By the mid-50s, use of synthetic fabrics improves the protection-weight ratio considerably and flak vests begin to show up that are light enough to be worn by your average foot soldier without too much encumbrance. The flak vest used by the US Army right up during Vietnam certainly couldn't stop a direct hit from an AK-47 round, but it did dramatically improve a soldier's chances of living through a nearby grenade or mortar explosion.

Anyway, back to the question at hand: The Soviets did experiment with metal body armor during WWII. I have seen a number of pictures of the stuff and in all cases it looks basically identical to the stuff in the picture you linked to - basically, a simple metal breastplate not unlike 17th century footsoldier armor. It also looks like there was some sort of padding, or perhaps metal plates, sewn into the uniform in some locations, but it's hard to tell because Russian uniforms were very bulky anyway. One other picture I have seen also showed a back plate of similar construction to the front plate. On the linked picture, it's difficult to tell whether the soldier are wearing a back piece or not as they're all facing more or less directly into the camera.

While the I have never seen any data about actual number of units manufactured or issued, it does seem that the deployment of this style of body armor was fairly limited. I have seen some actual combat photos from Stalingrad with Russian soldiers wearing the stuff, so clearly it did see some action.

As to how effective such body armor was, it's hard to say. It looks like pretty bulky stuff, so I'm sure it would have slowed soldiers down considerably. OTOH, even a relatively thin metal breastplate would proabably offer some protection against shrapnel, especially from small HE rounds like mortar bombs and grenades.

I guess if you BTS did want to model it in CM, you could give troops with body armor a 'protection bonus' that would reduce casualties from shrapnel, but not so much from small arms fire. The trade off would be that body armor equipped units would fatigue much faster.

Overall, I'd rather have my SMG squads carrying a couple more magazines of ammo than have them wearing metal body armor. My SMG squads tend to run out of ammo long before they run out of soldiers. . .

Cheers,

YD

[White Phosphorus]

There is a personal account on battlefield.ru of an AT-rifle gunner wearing a plate between his long coat and padded jacket. He talks about how useless and heavy it was, then German mortars start shelling them and shrapnel shreds his clothing, but fails to penetrate the plate, saving his life.

[JasonC]

The caption says they are pioneers.

Wouldn't help against a rifle or full MG bullet, but would work fine against an MP, or shrapnel.

[Nippy]

Not much of a historic reference, but here is a box shot of an Italeri Brand model kit of what they call "WWII Soviet Assault Infantry"

[Stalin's Organ]

A helmet won't stop a bullet much either - but ppl still wear them.

Many bullets will strike "glancing" blows that are relatively easily defeated by armour, but not by flesh and blood.

Whether it's worth carry around all that extra weight probably depends upon whether you're being shot at at the time or not!

[Hans]

I could see it being of some value to troops on the defensive or those making a deliberate assault against a heavily fortified site. (if only from a morale point of view.

As noted I would grant users of such a bit more protection from infantry weapons and increased protection from HE frag weapons to include lowering the KIA percentage.(HOWEVER, I have no idea how Charles in his arcane and mysterious ways does this) However I would also slow them down and increase their rate of exhaustion - I'd also make them easier to detect if moving, nothing like steel on steel to tell the enemy "I'm here".

An interesting option-add on, kinda like modeling the crews of tanks puting logs, tank treads and anything else on their vehicles to increase protection.

[Meach]

Just a wild guess here but if the caption says they are pioneers, maybe they are involved in mine-clearance and thus the armour plate might be of use? Bomb disposal personnel wear thick suits of the stuff nowadays, maybe this squad of soviets were a pre-cursor to those brave teams?