Plate Armor Myths: Somersaulting Knights, Fluted Steel and Kevlar

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From roughly the 9th to the 14th centuries European warriors relied on mail, tens of thousands of riveted rings that stopped a cutting edge but passed a mace's kinetic energy straight into the ribs. In the 14th century armorers strapped rigid plates over the joints, shins, and chest to spread that force, and by about 1420 the full suit had arrived, custom fitted in workshops in Milan and southern Germany at a price the episode likens to a private jet. Field armor weighed 15 to 25 kilograms spread across the body, so a trained knight could sprint, climb ladders, do somersaults, and mount without stirrups. The crane-hoisted knight comes from Mark Twain and the 50-kilogram Stechzeug used for jousting.

Plate drove an arms race. The estoc, a stiff thrusting sword used with half-swording, and the halberd's spike sought the gaps at armpits, groin, and visor, while war hammers and poleaxes dented steel and concussed through helmets. German armorers answered with fluted Maximilian armor, its ridges stiffening plates without added weight. Firearms ended the balance: armor shrank to munition three-quarter suits, then to the cuirass, then to portraits like Frederick the Great's. After matchlocks reached Japan in 1543, Japanese armorers moved from laced lamellar to solid plates and bullet-tested breastplates. The same principle returned in Ned Kelly's plow armor, Wilkinson Sword's flak jackets, and ceramic plates over Kevlar.

• A war hammer concentrated its blow into an area about the size of a coin.
• Japanese samurai kept plate protection in use until the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877.
• At Glenrowan in 1880 a constable felt he was shooting at an evil spirit, but Ned Kelly took over two dozen wounds to his unprotected limbs.
• The RAF had Wilkinson Sword sew manganese steel plates into canvas vests to protect bomber crews from flak.
• Soft Kevlar stops penetration but suffers back face deformation, the same blunt trauma problem that once defeated mail.