Weapon Type
Body Armor
Torso and limb protection.
Body Armor
Armor — Subcategory
Overview
Body armor protects the torso, arms, and legs from weapons — the most critical body regions for survival in combat. It represents one side of the eternal offense-defense arms race: every weapon that threatens the body drives development of armor to stop it, which in turn drives weapons development to defeat that armor. Body armor has been worn by soldiers in every culture that could produce it, from prehistoric hide garments to modern ceramic plate carriers.
Historical Body Armor
Organic Armor
The first armor materials were naturally available:
- Quilted fabric (gambeson/aketon) — Multiple layers of linen or wool, stitched tightly; surprisingly effective against slashing weapons and blunt trauma; worn as the primary armor of ordinary medieval soldiers or as padding under mail; cheap and widely available
- Leather — Hardened (cuir bouilli) leather resists slashing; lighter than metal; used across many cultures
- Lamellar armor — Small plates (horn, leather, bronze, or iron) laced together in horizontal bands; articulated; used across Central Asia, China, Japan, Byzantium
Bronze and Iron Plate
- Dendra panoply (c. 1450 BCE) — Greek; full bronze plate body armor; one of the earliest examples
- Linothorax — Layered linen glued together; used by Greek hoplites; experimental reconstructions show it stops bronze-tipped arrows
- Roman lorica segmentata — Articulated iron plate in horizontal bands; the iconic Roman armor; limited to legionaries and probably not as universal as Roman film portrays
- Lorica hamata — Roman chainmail; more common and longer-lasting than the segmentata
Chainmail (Haubergeon/Hauberk)
- Construction — Thousands of interlocking iron or steel rings; each ring closed by a rivet (riveted mail) or simply punched out (butted mail — weaker)
- Properties — Flexible; comfortable; distributes force across the rings; stops cuts well; poor against thrusting and blunt trauma; heavy (15–20 lbs for a full hauberk)
- Medieval standard — The hauberk, chausses (leg mail), and coif (head mail) were the standard knight's armor from roughly 900–1350
Plate Armor (1300–1600)
See the Age of Chivalry article for a detailed treatment. Key points:
- Full plate from head to foot; weighed 15–25 kg; well-distributed
- Gothic and Milanese armor styles represent the apex
- Defeated by firearms (which required impossibly thick plate to stop) rather than any medieval weapon
Japanese Armor (Yoroi, Do-Maru, Tosei Gusoku)
See the Katana & Japanese Swords article for context:
- Lamellar construction with lacquered leather and iron scales
- Beautifully decorated; functionally sophisticated
- Adapted with plate elements after European contact (post-1543)
Modern Body Armor
Steel Helmets and Flak Jackets (WWI–WWII)
- Steel helmets (introduced 1915–1916) dramatically reduced head wounds from shrapnel
- M1 helmet (US, 1941) — The iconic WWII helmet; steel; nylon liner
- Flak jacket — WWII aircrew garment; manganese steel plates in a canvas vest; heavy; protected against flak and fragments, not rifle bullets
Ballistic Vests (1960s–present)
- Kevlar (1965) — Para-aramid synthetic fiber; flexible; stops pistol rounds and fragments; the first practical soft body armor; still in use
- PASGT vest — Personal Armor System for Ground Troops; Kevlar soft armor; US military standard from 1983
- SAPI/ESAPI plates — Small Arms Protective Insert; ceramic/composite hard plates; stop rifle rounds; inserted into plate carriers front and back; current standard
Modern Hard Plate Armor
- Ceramic composite — Alumina oxide or silicon carbide ceramic face backed by Dyneema (UHMWPE) or Kevlar; the ceramic face shatters the bullet on impact, dissipating energy
- Level III/IV — NIJ (National Institute of Justice) ratings; Level III stops 7.62×51mm; Level IV stops armor-piercing .30-06
- Weight — A full modern plate carrier with front/back ESAPI plates weighs 18–25 lbs; similar to medieval chainmail
This article is a stub. Contributions covering specific armor types, cultures, and materials are welcome.
Battles & Operations
Weapons
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Flak Jacket
The flak jacket is the fragmentation-protective vest of the mid-twentieth century: first the steel-plated flak suits of American bomber crews in 1943, then the Marine Corps M1951 vest with plates of Doron fiberglass laminate, and the Army's all-nylon M1952 and M69 vests. None were meant to stop a rifle bullet; they were designed against shell and grenade fragments, which caused most battlefield wounds. Worn by the hundreds of thousands in Korea and Vietnam, they were the first body armor issued to ordinary infantrymen since the age of the pikeman.
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Gothic Plate Armor
Gothic armor is the name collectors give to the full plate harnesses made in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire from roughly 1460 to 1500, the high point of the medieval armorer's art. Slender, pointed and fluted, with rippled edges and cusped borders echoing the architecture of the age, the Gothic harness enclosed its wearer entirely in articulated tempered steel yet weighed no more than an infantryman's modern kit. Made by the great workshops of Augsburg, Nuremberg and Landshut, it was the rival of the rounded Milanese style and the ancestor of the fluted Maximilian armor.
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Roman Lorica Segmentata
The lorica segmentata is the articulated iron plate cuirass that has come to define the Roman legionary in the modern imagination: overlapping hoops of iron around the torso and shoulders, held together by internal leather straps and brass hinges and buckles. It served from the reign of Augustus to the third century AD, alongside mail and scale rather than replacing them. The Romans' own name for it is unknown — 'segmentata' is a Renaissance coinage — and our knowledge rests on a handful of spectacular finds from Kalkriese, Corbridge and Newstead.