Helmet Ballistic Test: WW1 Austro-Hungarian M17 Stahlhelm

Hey everybody and welcome to another helmet ballistic test. I am Mike B and I've got my sexy little Canadian assistant, Bevan K, behind the camera. He's going to be helping me do this test on an Austro-Hungarian M1917 Stahlhelm. I know you're sitting there going no and I would be too if I was 12 years old and didn't understand why this was happening. So we're going to go through a couple disclaimers, give you a little bit of background on this particular one and then we're going to get to the shooting. But I want to go over first is the whole purpose of these tests is to see what a historical helmet or a historic helmet can hold up against as far as a direct hit. First caveat I know and Devin knows and most of my viewers understand these were not designed for direct hits to deflect them or stop them. They were designed for fragments, actual shrapnel like the balls that blow up overhead and come down on you. Dirt. Yep dirt, debris and stuff like that. Fragments not so much which is what people call shrapnel. Shell fragments move at a really high rate of speed and they're really sharp usually. But for a lot of stuff that's flying around hitting your head on stuff whatever that's what helmets are designed for. So I get that now to the historic part of this you're going you're destroying a piece of history. Okay you can look at it like that and I would agree as a helmet nerd and Devin's definitely a helmet nerd. I agree and it would make me cringe to see somebody taking one that had the Isonzo brown paint on it that hadn't been updated by the fins, another hole punched in it. Yep. And whatever and I get that it's an original shell which this is a AW64 if you want to get that really quick. So it's a legitimate one that was sent to the Finns during the Winter War and Continuation Wars and then used through the 60s was it? Well they actually bought those in the the 20s and 30s and then they would have used them just until 1955. Yes then they went to the 40-55 yeah. Okay I misspoke then yes they purchased these because I actually you corrected me on that one. Yep as a Finnish guy I should know. Right well but they what I always get confused is all the aid that they got like with the Italian helmet. Well they had everything under the sun so it's very easy to confuse their logistics because they had literally everything used in World War II at some point. That's where I get confused these were purchased however so because they had to get rid of war material Finnish Finland wanted it so everybody was a winner. Now I've always wondered and so is Devin and so have a lot of you what a World War I German and or Austro-Hungarian Stahlhelm would hold up against as far as a direct fire. Shooting a reproduction helmet does not cut it in this case because the steel is very different and the quality is very different. Now some would argue that the Austro-Hungarians were not of the same quality as the Germans and this is actually an Austrian Austro-Hungarian manufactured shell. Unless I could find an actual proper German one in the future that's really trashed and beyond repair this is what we're going to have to deal with for now and that's the best we're going to do. Now all those disclaimers aside let's get to the shooting. All right so Felonius Devonius is going to take us off or start us off with the 71 grain full metal jacket 32 ACP. That was a fairly decent energy transfer for a 32. That would have really cracked somebody's coconut. What did you do? I don't know. Why is 32 such a magnum around all of a sudden? Wow god that's pretty rough that's that's a pretty big deformation pattern for 32 and this is a common round for world war one. Yep a lot of private purchase and some issued pistols were chambering that. That's not good. All right I'll take the next one. Okay we're going to be using the 9x18 macro. I forgot what grain what weight bullet this is. It's a full metal jacket it's tall ammo and just the normal stuff and we're going to be shooting the VZ 52 or 82 pistol. Again I we didn't mention this we're standing about five yards just because it's close so we can hit the target and it's a it's a pretty close combat scenario especially for something like this which would have been used in close quarters. And we don't got a ton of space to walk with our heavy body armor on. It's well we don't have plates in but yes we're actually wearing armor it's not just it's hot out yeah we had an incident last summer and learned our lesson so I did. Oh another big energy transfer. That one yep I saw the styrofoam fly. That's not good either. Because this is basically just like 380 super. Yeah which is yeah I mean 380 was also quite prevalent. Damn um. But I thought Germany was good at making stuff. Well they're gonna be like oh it's Austro-Hungarian they were screwed at that point in the war and it'll be all the Germans saying that. Fair fair. Or all the Austrians like no it doesn't represent it. All right well just probably hit right there then. All right all right so now we're gonna shoot a what 9x19? 124 grain. 124 grain. Geez I mean obviously 9mm was used quite frequently. Well I mean it's basically just the first time 9mm cut its teeth. My god. That's that's pretty effed. I'll just repeat it that's not good. Uh we're gonna have to go all around on this helmet to get we gotta wow. To get fresh steel. Yeah I'll try and I'll try and hit the front right there. All right. Geez. Speaking of my two world wars. It's a 230 grand full metal jacket 45 acp out of the 1911. Oh that caved the whole front. Yeah front end right there dang. Still a fairly clean hit but. And then it grazed off of there. I mean that's pretty bad. That's it seems that German steel German and Swiss steel breaks. Yeah it's definitely a harder steel. Yep well it's hot hot rolled hot press steel. So I guess it makes it. So now we're gonna shoot it with a 7.62x25 uh which didn't didn't really do so hot against all the other rounds so this is probably just overkill at this point. But what's the grain on this? I think it's a 95. It's Romanian 80s surplus. Okay. Yeah that'll do it. Yeah when you see the styrofoam flying you know that's not good. Where did you hit? Oh right there. It's a giant hole and then there's the exit. Yeah that's the exit. Well I'll do the honors. Send it off. With the .357 right there. So now we're going to be doing a .357 Magnum 142 grain semi-wide cutter full metal jacket out of the Ruger GP100. I don't really have high hopes for this guy. Same thing it did on the, it made that pattern. That little triangle again? Yeah and it did maybe the angle was down. That's the exit. No it wasn't that's your entrance for your tote grub. Probably some bits. Well I think it must have exited or maybe it's still in the head who knows. Yeah that's that's that's pretty much expected. That's that's done for. Yeah I mean for a Gen 1 helmet that's meant to stop dirt mostly this isn't bad for its time but it's not by any means ready for today. Nope not even close and the type of steel that was used the design it's again we understand that they're not even modern helmets are not necessarily designed to stop a direct hit even though nowadays they can and they weren't back then they were designed for like we said not even fragments but like actual shrapnel dirt clods debris wood chunks big dirt clods that come up and hit you they you know get raised up from artillery and they come down in your head that's what it's designed for all the helmets in World War One were designed for that not for a direct hit. Now this was also very interesting because it didn't it didn't just punch clean holes through like I expected it to. It broke which is really common on German steel that I've seen in Swiss steel so I don't know exactly what kind of steel it is I'm not a metallurgist but it's very consistent in its performance um at least it stopped one well you know it wasn't a total failure so if you get hit in the you know you're going through a trench and somebody's got a 32 and they pop you in the head they get knocked down. You're probably okay but you know that's probably the number one pistol cartridge you're going up against anyways is going to be a 32 your best chances of getting shot by a pistol round were by 32 so. Yep all right well let's wrap the video up. So that's what we've got we already kind of wrapped up the actual performance of the helmet I just wanted to let you know that because of Patreon supporters and channel members for both of our channels this was made possible this was a very expensive target to make a short video on I think it went pretty well and now we can all see what in World War One or Austro-Hungarian Stahlhelm would have done against direct hits in the warfare that was going on at that time. We didn't do rifle rounds because it's not gonna stop a rifle round if it doesn't stop a nine millimeter that's usually what we've gathered um but yeah so that's why we didn't do rifles I know you guys would like to see that it's just gonna punch clean holes through it it's not gonna it's not gonna be anything special almost guaranteed so anyway Patreon supporters are great and channel members are great because I was able to get this which was a lot of money it was 250 bucks right and if I would just be funding this out of pocket that would not have happened this year like that's that's just not a reality so if you want to support the channel you want to see more cool stuff like this like I've been promising all winter you can become you can support my channel and Devin Kay's channel by subscribing to his channel he's also got a Patreon he talks about it there um you can go to the link to the description that's gonna be right below Devin's channel and hit hit up my Patreon become a supporter on there or become a channel member five bucks a month or more on either platform gets you into my discord server which is really a fun time it's pretty educational I learn a lot on there it's fun to hang out with people that have similar interests and the different specialties and whatever it's really cool and people that genuinely like what Devin and I do it's really great so if you want to do that that would be awesome if you want to support our work but not you can't do it financially hey I totally get that that's that's fine you can still support us if you want by liking this video going and subscribing to both of our channels and also sharing this video out really does help it's the best way to get content out there and get more people that may not be aware of our channels to realize oh well there has been a ballistic test done on one of these and that's very interesting so that's the kind of thing that you can do if you can't do it financially now if you fall into the third category you don't want to support either of our work you're just like nah well I hate to break it to you already have by watching this video so thank you everyone for watching and we'll see you on the next helmet ballistic test video