
Head Wounds and Steel Helmets - smacktoward
https://www.historicalfirearms.info/post/185622315174/historicalfirearms-head-wounds-steel-helmets
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GistNoesis
It reminded me of this funny "paradox" :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IQE0uZUMys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IQE0uZUMys)
TLDW : In WW1, after being issued helmets, the number of head injuries for
soldiers rose significantly.

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taneq
It's like the old story about when airbags (or was it seatbelts?) became
mandatory, serious injuries from car crashes became much more common - because
many more people were surviving serious crashes and being counted as injured,
not killed.

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sdrothrock
These both seem illogically logical, kind of like the other story about an
engineer who figured out where to armor aircraft by looking at the ones that
came back -- he armored the places that were never shot up.

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desdiv
More info:

>Blackett's team made the logical recommendation that the armour be placed in
the areas which were completely untouched by damage in the bombers which
returned. They reasoned that the survey was biased, since it only included
aircraft that returned to Britain. The areas untouched in returning aircraft
were probably vital areas, which, if hit, would result in the loss of the
aircraft.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research#Second_Wor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research#Second_World_War)

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hackerbabz
I've heard it many times, and it's great, but I think it must not be true.
Planes had hardly any armor at all and all I've ever seen was put in very
logical places. Protect the engines, fuel, pilot, and other crew.

It's not like they welded a piece of steel into a random place on the hull
because they'd never seen it get hit before.

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chrxr
Whilst it may not have been Blackett or his team doing the research, research
in this area does seem to have been done(1), and there are books and papers
written about it(2). 1-
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kyZgEKzZZtJQTCSG2/examine-
yo...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kyZgEKzZZtJQTCSG2/examine-your-
assumptions) 2 -
[https://people.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/Wald.pdf](https://people.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/Wald.pdf)

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who-knows95
this reminds me of ~~ [https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-
empires/objec...](https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-
empires/objects/carabiniers-breastplate-from-the-waterloo-battlefield/)

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mito88
NOT FOUND

The URL you requested could not be found.

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ElCapitanMarkla
I got that too, seems to be working at
[https://www.historicalfirearms.info/post/185618493489/head-w...](https://www.historicalfirearms.info/post/185618493489/head-
wounds-steel-helmets-in-the-march-1943)

