Surviving a headshot isn’t particularly likely in any scenario. Helmets are more to stop shrapnel, glancing blows, and- depending on the helmet- maybe pistol rounds. Realistically, a helmet just isn’t stopping a direct shot with a rifle round.
TL;DR: Because Saving Private Ryan is a movie, and meanwhile reality is reality.
Whether or not a helmet can stop a bullet (and manage protect its wearer in the process) depends an awful lot on how much energy it has to dissipate, i.e. how fast the bullet was traveling and how much it weighs.
Rifle bullets travel very fast. This has not changed appreciably between WWII and today, although contrary to expectation it was more common to have front line soldiers issued with full power battle rifles back in WWII which were actually more powerful than the intermediate cartridge rifles most often issued to them today. Military rifles nowadays actually commonly fire a much lighter bullet than in the past. (Yes, there are exceptions. That’s not really the point.)
There is no such thing as any kind of metal helmet that can protect the wearer against a rifle bullet that is a square hit and within the rifle’s optimally effective range. You can play with ceramics like are used in plate carriers that protect the torso, or weird high tech aramid fibers, etc. but the long and short of it is that such a thing would be too bulky and heavy to feasibly wear on your head. A bog standard 7.62x39 round, i.e. that fired from an AK pattern rifle commonly found all over the world, delivers around 1000 ft-lb of energy at impact within 100 yards. Even if you could magically stop it somehow it would ring your bell like you wouldn’t believe. We’re talking unconsciousness, fractured skull, brain damage.
And to put it into perspective, the 7.92x57 round fired by the types of rifles likely to be issued to the Germans during WWII was even more powerful than this, developing around 2,900 ft-lb at the muzzle (I can’t find a figure for at 100 yards offhand, but just subtract a couple of percent). Yes, that’s around three times more powerful. You are therefore much less likely in reality to be happy about being shot in the dome with a WWII battle rifle with a primitive WWII helmet versus a modern helmet and a modern intermediate power cartridge.
A steel helmet stands a greater chance of deflecting a pistol round which is slower and carries considerably less energy. 9x19 round at 100 yards is packing more like 250 ft-lb of energy, a quarter as much as the 7.62, and is also shaped with a much wider cross section and a less pointy nose so it’s less likely to penetrate hard objects.
Any garden variety lid would be much more useful at deflecting a shot that was a glancing blow, or that was fired from a very long way away, and/or has ricocheted off of something and thus lost much of its energy. Not to mention fragments of whatever it hit – bits of brick or doorframe or glass or whatever it was the enemy’s bullet hit near you that was not you. And shrapnel, and gumpf raining down on your head from nearby explosions, etc. Helmets are designed to maximize their effectiveness based on what we understand and can build (and, yes, what the lowest bidder can manufacture) but are not and never have been expected to shrug off a straight-on headshot from an enemy’s rifle because this is a fool’s errand.
The thing people don’t really get about “bullet proof armour” is that it’s job is to stop the bullet going into you and messing up your fragile internals - but Newton still wins. The force still has to go somewhere.
Imagine someone held a stake to your chest then someone else smacked it with a sledgehammer - this would be a Very Bad Time for you, what with all the bleeding and internal trauma. If instead someone held you down with a steel plate and that was sledgehammered with the same force - it would hurt like hell, but probably not do the same amount of internal damage because the force is distributed over a wider area. There is of course a limit - at some point the force is still going to be too high and cause fatal damage.
Helmets work the same way - the internals of your head are very fragile, so keeping the bullet out is pretty important, but the same problem exists. The force has to go somewhere, and while getting whacked in the face with a sledgehammer is better than having a stake driven into your forehead it not that much better
Right, you’re taking a concussion in exchange for not becoming a Jackson Pollock painting.
That shot was a glancing blow and would have gone through had it been a direct hit. The stupid part (done for the movie effect) was him taking it off and looking at it, as he clearly was in sight of someone shooting, maybe a sniper, and he should have taken the lucky bounce as a warning he was an easy target. But also, that beach was a slaughterhouse so the odds were still not great to survive even if he had taken cover.
Saving private Ryan is a movie
Controversial take.
Helmets only give the wearer a better probability to survive a direct shot to the head. Helmet engineering has improved just like other engineering disciplines. That said even a WWII helmet gave the wearer a higher probability of surviving certain calibers and bullet types more than without one. Take the example of a high angle/glancing shot. Most of the kinetic energy does not transfer to the head or helmet in either case. The head will still absorb more of the glancing forces than a helmet, thus giving the wearer a much lower probability of surviving than if they wore a helmet.
Nowadays helmets are made to improve the absorption and deflection properties, thus giving an even higher probability of survival. That said bullets of sufficient size and shape as well as shrapnel can penetrate the helmet if precisely placed.
The shot is at a steep angle where it hits the helmet, ricocheting. You can see another hole a few inches back from the initial ricochet.
Saving Private Ryan - Lucky bastard! | 00:11 | https://youtu.be/bTmQA4DKYkg
Is The US Army’s New Helmet a Complete Disaster? The IHPS | 18:17 | https://youtu.be/SwDoWSkiGZ4
Notable comment:
@nurse-dude | 1 year ago
Another fantastic demonstration of how a ballistic helmet’s primary function is NOT protection from rifle/pistol rounds but rather a secondary function. They are primarily designed to protect from shrapnel and blunt force trauma.
Well it’s a movie, so there’s that. Helmets primary use is to stop shrapnel and protect against bonking your head. I’ve heard stories of, and seen pictures of helmets stopping bullets, but there’s lots of factors. How far away did the bullet originate? Did it ricochet off something first? War is a very chaotic environment. Lots of weird things happen. There are stories from WWI and WWII where a bullet was stopped by a bible in a breast pocket, but it’s really up to random chance.
I believe most modern helmets are rated to stop a 9MM, but beyond that it’s a crap shoot.
Helmets work better now than back then. Go to the VA you will see lots of traumatic brain injury vs before they would have just been in a body bag. Also movie vs real life. In real life there are worse things than death down range.
Also helmets now focus more on shrapnel than bullets since. You are more likely to be taken out by IED or artillery than a snipers bullet and if you are no armor is stopping that.
Better bullets.
The armor soldiers wear is only gonna stop so much. Smaller/slower bullets, especially hollow points. Bigger, faster, solid core/jacketed rounds are meant to penetrate armor, and you’re only going to have so much protection vs how much weight you can carry.
No idea but I’d guess armour piercing rounds being commonplace these days?
Standard rifle rounds during WWI would go right through a WWII helmet.
Generally it’s very difficult to stop a rifle round.
Perhaps a WWII helmet could stop a contemporary .32 or .38 cal pistol, but I don’t know.
WWI rifles were ahead of their time.
