WI: Earlier Bulletproof Vest

danwild6

Apparently the Koreans developed a successful ballistic vest in the 1860's. So WI this technology were developed by a westerner in the early 1800's instead? Would we see the return of armor to line infantry and thus the rebirth of heavy infantry? This technology could even be improved upon with the addition of asbestos fibers to the material preventing it from bursting into flames.
 

Lycaon pictus

Donor
The first thing that comes to mind, if this were invented at any point after the invention of the breech-loading rifle, is "bigger guns, better aim."

This in itself would lead to some changes in military training.
 

EWHM

Probably just increases the wound to KIA ratio for armies that deploy it, and would probably tend to drive armies towards more powerful rounds, which normally means less ammunition per soldier in a standard load. My guess is the net effect is to increase the advantage that logistically superior armies have over their inferiors.
 
Kaiphranos

Kaiphranos

Donor
The Wikipedia article describes the vest as being effective against "rounds fired from a matchlock rifle at 100 meters." Personally, I've never heard of a matchlock rifle, only matchlock muskets--but the relevant citation leads to some sort of Korean article, so maybe this is just a translation error. For the most part, I was under the impression that matchlocks were obsolete in the West before the 1860's, so would the armor have been equally effective against more modern European-style weapons?
 

danwild6

It also said that it proved effective against US forces in 1871 which at the time were using breechloading rifles.
 
Kome

Kome

Kaiphranos said:
The Wikipedia article describes the vest as being effective against "rounds fired from a matchlock rifle at 100 meters." Personally, I've never heard of a matchlock rifle, only matchlock muskets--but the relevant citation leads to some sort of Korean article, so maybe this is just a translation error. For the most part, I was under the impression that matchlocks were obsolete in the West before the 1860's, so would the armor have been equally effective against more modern European-style weapons?
Click to expand...
It says it was tested on matchlocks. Guess thats all the weapon testers had to spare on tests.
 
Workable Goblin

Workable Goblin

Well, bulletproof vests were never particularly novel or surprising technology. There were plenty of vendors around in the Civil War who tried to get rich selling cuirasses to new soldiers, for example, there were silk-based vests (like the one Franz Ferdinand was wearing), and so on. They were just never practical for wide distribution until recently because they were variously too expensive, too incapable, too heavy, difficult to mass produce, and so on.
 

danwild6

So basically we need a certain amount of investment and standardization to take place. It'd be an interesting TL, if Eli Whitney building his experience with the cotton gin and assembly line mass production techniques produce a commercial vest for the US Army. Maybe an internal armor scheme for naval vessels, I'm thinking lining the inside of a wooden hulled warship with this could radically reduce splintering from solid shot.
 
Kaiphranos

Kaiphranos

Donor
danwild6 said:
It also said that it proved effective against US forces in 1871 which at the time were using breechloading rifles.
Click to expand...

Hmm. It says that they were used in that battle; it doesn't say they were useful. The casualties in that battle were pretty lopsided and not in the Koreans' favor...

The main article on bulletproof vests seems to imply that early models had some effectiveness against small arms, and that gangsters favored them for this reason, but police just shifted to larger caliber weapons.

So no, to answer the original poster's question--I don't really think this would lead to a change in tactics, even if widely adopted.
 

danwild6

Although the vests were effective against bullets, they were susceptible to fire because they were made of cotton. The vests were easily burnt by fragments from cannon fire; US records indicate that some Korean soldiers caught fire after a cannon attack. Also, the vests were too hot to wear in summer.
Click to expand...

Thats the actual quote I was referring to. The US obviously had an advantage in artillery in both numbers and modernity, which would go part of the way to explain the disparity in casualties. I see your point about an increase in calibre size being the logical consequence of increased protection. But thats the fun thing about this being invented a century earlier before rifled muskets and precision tolerances gives firearms the edge again. For example with the introduction of ironclads it briefly appeared that the naval ram was going to reemerge as a decisive weapon in warfare.
 

Sonderbund

One Interesting way too do that could be automatisation. This is from an thread talking about NC-Machines (https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=158197)
„Then something at the end of the article blew me away: Vaucanson died while he was working on regulating the French silk industry. He had designed a mechanical loom that more or less took manual weaving out of the equation and only had the person load it. (So? Why is this important? You ask.)
The concept was that punch cards would be fed through the top, giving a modicum of control to the speed and movement of the loom.
Enter Joseph Marie Jacquard: this man took Vaucanson's design and improved on it, taking multiple punch cards and putting them together into a string with each line on a card representing a line of pattern that the loom prints out.“

So you could end with standardized, industrialized weapons and armour. They would even outclass their non-industrial enemy more than before.
 

thesnufkin

I suspect that as we're talking about the nineteenth century, when armies were made up of millions of partially trained conscripts, the answer is that soldiers were too cheap for armies to be bothered spending the money on.

Today it makes economic as well as practical sense to look after your highly trained grunts. Then they were expendable.
 

Elfwine

Thesnufkin: Millions of partial trained conscripts?

That might make sense for most armies (though not Germany's) in WWI, but not the 19th century.

Look at Britain. Look at Prussia. Each has a completely different attitude and would probably make good use of a bulletproof vest if a practical, affordable one is available (and yes, the key word is affordable - armies are expensive enough as is) But to look at numbers in general...

Military and Naval Personnel of the Powers (1880/1890/1900)

Russia: 791,000/677,000/1,162,000
France: 543,000/542,000/715,000
Germany: 426,000/542,000/524,000
Britain: 367,000/420,000/624,000
Austria-Hungary: 246,000/346,000/385,000
Italy: 216,000/284,000/255,000
Japan: 71,000/84,000/234,000
United States: 34,000/39,000/96,000

Source: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, by Paul Kennedy.

The 1816-1880 military personal of the powers (which does not include Italy and Japan) is taken by Kennedy from another source, so comparing the two is difficult - but the numbers are still short of a million for any given country.
 
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