Helmet Ballistic Test: Italian M33 Steel Helmet

Hey everyone, welcome to another helmet ballistic test. I'm Mike B out here with my sexy little Canadian assistant, Devin K, and we're gonna do some camera work and take a turn shooting this Italian M33 steel helmet. Yes, it's finally here. This is one that I've really been waiting for for a long time. Super excited to do this. This one in particular, the reason we're shooting this, I've never seen a liner that was installed that absolutely ridiculously. The liner's screwed. And as far as the historical value, you're destroying a piece of history. The educational value that you're going to get out of this video of doing the ballistic test far outweighed this particular piece in its historical significance and whatever. So that's the cost-benefit analysis has been done. That's why we're doing this. It's not because we hate history and we're just out to destroy pieces of history and whatever. It's actually to learn more about it. And also that being said, both Devin K and I, and pretty much everybody with a brain, understands that these were not designed to stop direct hits. I get that. You don't have to say it a million times in the comments. It's made to stop fragmentation from a far away dirt and debris that's flying. And just to protect your head against things that you bump into out in the field. So I get that. No need to talk, you know, tell me that. I understand that. It's definitely common knowledge. The reason we're doing these tests is because we're both helmet nerds and have been for a long time. And we're always curious about, well, what can it stop with a direct hit, you know? So we're going to be testing out .32 ACP through .37. And without further ado, we'll get going. All right. So up first, we have the .32 ACP or the 7.65 by 17 millimeter for all you Europeans out of the CZ 50 pistol. Nice. So it performed as expected. It should have glanced it, barely dented the steel. Good stuff. I just want to get the angle. Yeah, that's about the angle somebody would be wearing it at. Now we're gonna be doing the 9 by 18 Makarov out of the CZ 82. I think it's an 85 grain full metal jacket. Heard the bounce on that one landed over on the trailer. I think that was the cartridge. This thing spits them out because it went that way. So that was a glancing shot. I'm going to retake that shot. All right. Because yeah, that wasn't really fair. There you go. I'm so flinchy from now from the last time. Yeah. All right. So that was a direct hit. And it just yet barely dented it again. Off to a good start. All right, so it passed the 9 by 18 Makarov. So now we're going to shoot the 9 by 19 Luger out of a Luger at it. Sorry about the wind too, guys. It's pretty windy out here today. Okay, that was about as direct as you can get. And it just did a nice dent. Glanced up. Still performing well. Not bad. All right, we'll try not to hit the rivet because that's a pretty weak area. But come on, baby. Get her done. Okay, so now we're going to be doing the 45 ACP 230 grain full metal jacket out of the Colt Model 1917. Now they're single action. That dented it less than the nine millimeter. That's really weird. And it's kind of weird. I did what it's supposed to do. But that steel that kind of tells us what the quality of steel was is and also how 45 is not as powerful as everyone thinks. It's a man stopper. Two world wars. Yeah, well, you were shooting at these helmets in the second one. And obviously, they wouldn't have stopped it. So maybe out of a submachine gun. Yeah. All right. Now we'll we'll ramp things up just a little bit. Alrighty, so it stopped nine by 19 and 45 ACP. So now this is the round that kind of separates the men from the boys. This is the 7.62 Tokarev, which basically until recently, was one of the few pistol cartridges that body armor was built to. And so we'll we'll give it a Yep, that's pretty typical. Not a big deal. So like he said, this is a hot little round and because it failed on this round is not a bad helmet make this. So very few steel helmets have actually deflected a 7.62 by 25 millimeter. I think what was it the East German m 56. The second one we did and then the Bulgarian m 71. Other than that, I've not seen even some Kevlar helmets have problems with the 7.62 Tokarev. But for the sake of the test, it must go on. All right, now for the big boy, that's gonna be the 357 Magnum out of the Ruger GP 100 using 142 grain full metal jacket. Oh, did it? It bounced. It looks like it bounced, but it cracked. Huh? How's the liner like the fragments make it through the tongues and stuff? Oh, yeah, frankly, he's probably dead. Because you can see right where the split is right there. Yeah, he's probably dead. So yeah, I will say the round defeated the helmet. Yeah. Interesting. All right, let's wrap this up. So overall, not a bad performance. This is about what you'd expect for most. Again, sorry for the wind. It's pretty much the standard where it defeats all the rounds until 7.62 by 25 Tokarev, which this it doesn't reflect poorly on the helmets design or the integrity of it. That's a hot little round even some Kevlar helmets have a hard time defeating that. So not too bad. But yeah, I performed compared to other helmets in the same era and everything and kind of run through the same design. satisfactorily. It's pretty average. Wasn't good. It wasn't bad. It was just there, which is kind of what you'd expect from a steel helmet. So thanks for watching, everybody. If you enjoyed this video, let me know in the comments. If you want to support this channel financially, you can do so through Patreon link to those in the description. It's a dollar a month, five bucks a month of mortgage into the discord server. Pretty fun time in there. Also go over and check out Devin Kay's channel and try to remember to put a link in the description. If not, it's youtube.com slash Devin Kay. And he's got a bunch of videos and does material that I don't know about and that you can learn a lot from that you're not going to see on my channel. So it's worth it's worth the watch. And he's also got a Patreon too. The support really does help us and made this trip possible this collaboration day, because he was able to come down here. We've got gas money. We've got helmets to shoot. We've got ammo. We've got guns of different calibers. So we can, we can self fund these channels like we have been to a certain point, but it limits what we can do as far as creative videos and stuff like that and content. But this is the kind of stuff that Patreon really helps for. So thank you so much to my past and present patrons and all that stuff. If you can't support the channel financially, that's totally fine. I totally understand that. So does Devin. But your viewership and your interaction with the videos, like hitting the like button and all that stuff really does help. So yeah, I appreciate you watching. Hope you learned something. Hope you enjoyed it. And we'll see you on the next episode of Helmet Ballistic Tests.