The Body Armor the Army Gave Helicopter Crews but Not Its Own Grunts

By 1965 the Army had ceramic body armor that could stop a rifle bullet, and it went to the men in the doors of the helicopters. The rifleman on the ground wore a nylon vest built for fragments, and when the Army finally built a bullet-stopping vest for ground troops, the 1st Cavalry Division found it far too heavy to walk in. The infantry did not get plates until 2003. Chapters: 0:00 The plate in the door of the Huey 1:57 The vest the grunt was given 4:18 Why nylon stops fragments and not bullets 6:14 The armor built for the men who flew 9:52 Why the crews got it first 11:24 The plate the Army built for grunts 13:31 Patrol in the dry season 15:16 The vest that stopped a bullet 16:43 Kevlar, the Gulf, and the plates of 2003 19:14 Back at the landing zone Your turn: did you wear your flak jacket on patrol, and did you ever see a chicken plate or the Variable Body Armor? Unit, place and year, one line is enough. Sources: - U.S. Army Natick Laboratories, Body Armor for Aircrewmen (1969) and related technical reports - Army Concept Team in Vietnam, Final Report: Body Armor, ACL-24/671 (June 1967) - U.S. Army Materiel Command, Support to United States Army in Vietnam: Clothing and Equipment (February 1967) - Shelby L. Stanton, U.S. Army Uniforms of the Vietnam War (Stackpole Books, 1989) - Accounts from Army and Marine veterans of the Vietnam War #VietnamWar #VietnamVeterans #MilitaryHistory