Armour
Armour is a covering used to protect an object, individual, or vehicle from physical injury or damage. The word itself dates from 1297, where it meant a mail, a defensive covering worn in combat. It came into Middle English from the Old French armure, which traces back to the Latin armatura, meaning arms and equipment. From the same root word grew a second meaning entirely. Today, armour also names whole forces of tanks and mechanised infantry, the descendants of heavy cavalry. How did a single word travel from a knight's steel harness to a column of tanks? And why did the invention of firearms, which should have made armour useless, instead push it into its later stages? The answers run from ancient Sumer to a battlefield in 1914, from war elephants to ballistic vests.
On the Stele of Vultures in ancient Sumer, in what is now south Iraq, sits the first record of body armour in history. Scale mail appears in surviving records from the New Kingdom of Egypt, Zhou dynasty China, and dynastic India. In Japan, cuirasses and helmets were being manufactured as early as the 4th century. Tankō, worn by foot soldiers, and keikō, worn by horsemen, were both pre-samurai forms built from iron plates connected together by leather thongs. Japanese lamellar armour, the keiko, travelled through Korea and reached Japan around the 5th century, taking the shape of a sleeveless jacket, leggings, and a helmet. Mail made of interlocking iron rings is believed to have first appeared some time after 300 BC. Its invention is credited to the Celts, and the Romans are thought to have adopted their design. Some armies barely covered the body at all. The Aztecs, between the 13th and 15th century, often wore no more than a helmet and leg plates, leaving the rest of the warrior protected by a large shield.
By 1400, the full harness of plate armour had been developed in the armouries of Lombardy. Early plate in Italy and elsewhere, made during the 13th to 15th century, was forged from iron, which could be carburised or case hardened to give a surface of harder steel. The shift from mail to plate was driven as much by economics as by combat. Plate armour became cheaper than mail by the 15th century because it required much less labour, and labour had become expensive after the Black Death. Mail did not vanish. It continued to guard the joints that plate could not cover well, such as the armpit, the crook of the elbow, and the groin. Headgear evolved in parallel. The small skull cap lengthened downward to protect the back of the neck and the sides of the head, becoming the bigger helmet known as the bascinet. Plate also brought a battlefield advantage that mail could not: a lance rest could be fitted directly to the breast plate.
In the early years of low velocity firearms, a full suit of armour or a breast plate could actually stop a bullet fired from a modest distance. Crossbow bolts seldom penetrated good plate, and no bullet would unless fired from close range. Rather than making plate obsolete, firearms stimulated its development into later stages. The numbers tell the story of escalation. During the 14th and 15th centuries armour seldom weighed more than 15 kilograms, but by the late 16th century it weighed 25 kilograms. As armies grew and armour was made thicker, the quality of the metal deteriorated, and larger cavalry horses had to be bred to carry the load. The protection bought time at the top of the command structure. Full suits of armour were worn by generals and princely commanders right up to the second decade of the 18th century. It was the only way they could stay mounted and survey the battlefield with safety from distant musket fire.
Starting in the mid-16th century, foot soldiers began discarding one plate element after another to save weight. Back and breast plates outlasted the rest. They continued in many European heavy cavalry units through the 18th century and Napoleonic times, surviving until the early 20th century, even though muskets could pierce plate armour from the moment they were introduced. In Japan, armour lasted until the late 19th century. The last major fighting in which it was used occurred in 1868, and samurai armour had one final short-lived appearance in 1877 during the Satsuma Rebellion. The age of the knight ended, yet improvisation carried on. During the American Civil War, soldiers bought iron and steel vests from peddlers, since both sides had considered standard issue body armour and rejected it. The results varied. Some vests deflected bullets and saved lives, while others were poorly made and led to tragedy. Many soldiers abandoned them anyway, partly for the extra weight on long marches, and partly because wearing one earned a man the stigma of a coward. At the start of World War I, thousands of French Cuirassiers rode out against the German Cavalry. Their shiny metallic cuirasses had been covered in dark paint, and canvas wraps hid their Napoleonic style helmets, so the sun would not flash off the metal and reveal their position to the enemy.
Today the descendant of the breast plate is the ballistic vest, also known as the flak jacket, built from ballistic cloth such as kevlar, dyneema, twaron, or spectra, reinforced with ceramic or metal plates. These are common among police officers, security guards, corrections officers, and parts of the military. The US Army uses Interceptor body armour, fitted with Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts, the ESAPIs, in the chest, sides, and back. Each plate is rated to stop three hits from a 7.62 by 51 NATO armour-piercing round at a range of 10 metres. Not every design has succeeded. Dragon Skin, another ballistic vest in testing, was judged by 2019 to be too heavy, expensive, and unreliable compared to traditional plates. Other nations field their own systems. The British Armed Forces use Osprey, rated to a standard generally equivalent to its US counterpart. The Russian Armed Forces field armour designated 6B43 through 6B45 depending on variant, running on the GOST system, which due to regional conditions has produced a technically higher protective level overall.
The first modern production technology for armour plating was used by navies building the ironclad warship. The first ironclad battleship, with iron armour over a wooden hull, was launched by the French Navy in 1859, prompting the British Royal Navy to answer the following year with a ship twice the size, clad in iron over an iron hull. After the first battle between two ironclads in 1862 during the American Civil War, the ironclad clearly replaced the unarmoured line-of-battle ship as the most powerful warship afloat. On land, the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front during the First World War spurred the development of the tank. It was envisioned as an armoured machine that could advance under enemy rifle and machine gun fire and answer with its own heavy guns, riding caterpillar tracks across ground broken by shellfire. Modern tank armour now uses harder composites and reactive armour designed to defeat shaped charges. A main battle tank conceived in the Cold War era can survive multiple rocket-propelled grenade strikes with minimal effect on its crew. Aircraft followed a parallel path. Once the knights of the air during the First World War, pilots grew vulnerable as anti-aircraft artillery improved, so armour plating was added to protect aircrew, engines, and fuel tanks. Recognition of the ground attack role led the US Air Force to authorise the A-10, a dedicated anti-armour aircraft that first saw action in the Gulf War.
Body armour for war horses has been used since at least 2000 BC. Cloth, leather, and metal protected cavalry horses in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Rome, and when used by European knights this protection was called barding. The horse became a target precisely because the knight had become so well protected. The Scots exploited this at the Battle of Bannockburn in the 14th century, killing the horses with infantry. In the same century at the Battle of Crécy, English longbowmen shot the horses and heavy infantry then killed the dismounted French knights. Barding developed as a response to such events. Cataphracts, armoured in scale for both rider and horse, are believed by many historians to have influenced the later European knights through contact with the Byzantine Empire. Surviving period examples of barding are rare, though complete sets are on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Wallace Collection in London, the Royal Armouries in Leeds, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Elephants wore armour too, first used without it in ancient times until injured animals began fleeing the battlefield. Elephant armour was often hardened leather, fitted while moist and then dried into a shell, though full plate was avoided because of its expense and the danger of the animal overheating.
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Common questions
What is armour used for?
Armour is a covering used to protect an object, individual, or vehicle from physical injury or damage, especially from direct contact weapons or projectiles during combat. It also protects against dangerous environments or activities such as cycling and construction sites. Personal armour protects soldiers and war animals, while vehicle armour is used on warships, armoured fighting vehicles, and some combat aircraft.
Where does the word armour come from?
The word armour began to appear in the Middle Ages as a derivative of Old French and is dated from 1297, meaning a mail or defensive covering worn in combat. It comes from the Old French armure, which derives from the Latin armatura, meaning arms and equipment.
When and where was the first body armour recorded in history?
The first record of body armour in history was found on the Stele of Vultures in ancient Sumer, in what is now south Iraq. Scale mail also appears in surviving records from the New Kingdom of Egypt, Zhou dynasty China, and dynastic India.
Why did firearms not make plate armour obsolete?
In the early years of low velocity firearms, full suits of armour or breast plates could stop a bullet fired from a modest distance, so firearms stimulated the development of plate armour into its later stages rather than ending it. Full suits were worn by generals and princely commanders up to the second decade of the 18th century so they could survey the battlefield safely from distant musket fire.
How much did armour weigh during the medieval and renaissance periods?
During the 14th and 15th centuries armour seldom weighed more than 15 kilograms, but by the late 16th century it weighed 25 kilograms. The increasing weight and thickness gave substantial resistance, but required breeding larger cavalry horses to carry the load.
What modern body armour does the US Army use?
The US Army has adopted Interceptor body armour, which uses Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts, or ESAPIs, in the chest, sides, and back. Each plate is rated to stop three hits from a 7.62 by 51 NATO armour-piercing round at a range of 10 metres.
What is horse armour called and when was it first used?
Armour for horses is called barding, especially when used by European knights, and body armour for war horses has been used since at least 2000 BC. Cloth, leather, and metal protected cavalry horses in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Rome.