Helmet Ballistic Test: South African M87 Composite Helmet

Hey everyone and welcome to another helmet ballistic test video. I am Mike B with my sexy little Canadian assistant, Devin K. Behind the camera I'm going to be doing some work on the pistols here. We've got with us today a really really cool one that would not have been possible if a awesome YouTube viewer, I can't remember your name because it was so long ago and I promised to do this last year and I never got around to it, but you know who you are. I do really appreciate this. Yes I made it intact and we're going to be shooting it today. I was going to keep it but I understand why you sent it to me like you said. So it's kind of distorted in the shape and whatever. So this is used by South Africa starting around 1987 and this was used until what year around? Pretty recently, 2000 teens, late 2000 teens. Really? So they used this for a long time? Yeah, 40 years. I suppose it's like the PASGT kind of you know where it was issued in the 80s but used even until a couple years ago. So anyway this is made out of Kevlar correct? Yes. It's not it's Aramid. I don't think it's name brand Kevlar but it's Aramid. Okay so it's an Aramid material? Yeah. Anyway so it's got the PASGT style it was obviously influenced by that and it's a pretty cool design if it was used that long. We're going to see why it was used that long and how effective it was. Now on this particular example like I said it's oblong it's it's been it's got some damage to it right no liner it's it's in okay shape and then the top has kind of got some what appears to be breast fractures around it yeah but the sides are all fine and intact which is why that awesome YouTube viewer um sent it to me so we are going to be shooting this today and before you get in your comments which I know you're frantically typing already some of you about why are you destroying a rare piece of history blah blah blah there's a really good reason why Devin K and I do this and why a lot of people enjoy this we're both passionate helmet nerds we love helmets from all over the world from every time period we're obsessed with them and the question that we've always had is what can these actually stand up against ballistic wise uh with with firearms going through different calibers and we started doing these tests so I started doing them several years ago and then you've been helping me for a couple years now for an educational purpose so we we destroy one helmet that's not really in good shape it's not really a collectible design or example rather and we sacrifice this for the sake and the better good of oh well now if somebody else is planning on doing this with this helmet maybe they won't do it now they won't feel the need to do it it's educational it's fun for helmet collectors and military collectors and for south african troops uh that passed or present you can see what your helmet may or may not have helped you out with as a direct hit because although they're not designed which is my second caveat for direct hits helmets have not been designed for that until very recently um they're designed for fragments and rocks and stuff they're thrown by artillery hitting your head uh battlefields are not fun you fall a lot you hit your head on stuff you're gonna need it for that uh we understand that they're not made for direct hits however it happens so let's see what it what it would actually stood up against that's kind of why we do this we understand completely they're made for um not direct hits I don't know how much more clear I can be but I know some of you are still afraid to tell you people whoa actually and I don't care about that because that's your problem so all that being said let's get to the fun part all righty so first thing we're gonna shoot the south african m87 with is a 71 grain 32 acp full metal jacket low I think oops well at least have a no liner you can see the deformation pattern pretty easily yeah that's and there's that's pretty square that's not good so well I mean this thing you know we the caveat is this thing looks like it's been run over by a truck at some point yeah but I mean it's already oblong and stuff so I mean it could not be this way for a new one it's already kind of taken some yeah and that's why like to shoot a new one that it costs a lot of money and I don't know I mean it still feels pretty solid here though well and again some of these composite helmets they have massive deformation from the small rounds so let's just keep going so now we're gonna be moving on to a czechoslovakian vz82 pistol chambered in 9x18 makarov I don't know the bullet weight on these it's the standard full metal jacket tall ammo commercial stuff but uh yeah also I forgot to mention we're standing at about five yards for a couple reasons a it's honestly so Devin and I could be more confident in our shot placement being specific especially with something like this that's already got a lot of the area we have to be more precise we're not the best pistol shooters in the world but we try and also this is not an unrealistic close quarters combat situation where a pistol might be used such as an urban setting etc etc so that's a couple reasons why we're staying this close so it hit next to it hit a little higher yeah no no no because that was the 32 nope that was you it was just sitting in a different that's just been deformed that much that yep so it already hit a somewhat deformed place but it was still far enough away still no penetration so hey we're doing good all things consider we're still in business but that's some pretty significant um backside deformation all right let's move on all right so it's so far held up against everything we put at it so we're gonna shoot a 124 grain uh nine millimeter fmj out of a beretta 92 nice hit nice outside deformation show them the inside that's about that's a little bit bigger than those two combined so this is so far it's stopping the rounds the airman's doing its job of catching the rounds but that deformation is going to be a problem i think you know what i mean yeah it's it's at the point where it's almost going to be injuring the user crushing transferring impact into their head yeah crushing the skull all right well i don't even know i'll probably hit it right there we might not even be able to go through all the calibers geez but we'll figure it out so now we're going to be using a 45 acp out of the colt model 1911 pistol it's going to be 230 grains full metal jacket i think we know what happened with that shot yeah well the styrofoam head gives it away okay so 40 45 has got some that's got some energy to it it that's where the screw was so it caught the round but the energy transfer would have been catastrophic to the wearer obviously the i know it's a styrofoam head it's been shot but just the energy of that blowing off would have been catastrophic okay so so far it's working but barely just yeah it's barely it's holding on for dear life at this point so so all right we'll uh i was gonna go right through the back with the uh or you can go right through the back with the toke rev all righty so so far it's barely hanging on and this is going to be the deciding factor we're going to shoot it with a 762 by 25 uh which is a caliber again designed to it'll go through most 3a body armor even today um this is romanian 80 surplus we don't know what the weight is i think it's 95 grains but we'll see maybe don't quote us okay let's see the big reveal well that's uh not good oh that's it penetrated yeah it went right through yeah usually when you see the little hole like that yeah you know it went through it doesn't violently shake that much so that's any splashes over there nope so it didn't go through two layers but it sure went through the one yep that's that's disappointing all right well we'll still finish the test all right it's now to kind of close out the test because it didn't defeat 762 Tokarev so we're not going to bother with the rifles um we're going to be using a 357 magnum it's going to be 142 grain semi-wide cutter full metal jacket out of a tor uh i almost called it a torus i have a torus oh that didn't go through it caught it oh shit that's the wrong one it's pretty gangly yeah that's a pen yeah toward the layers apart pretty smooth hole all right let's uh let's do the conclusion let's wrap it up so in conclusion um it didn't do that well compared to other composite helmets i don't know if it's because it's lighter it's thinner um the design of or how it's glued together what do you call it the pattern of the the layers the weave or the resin or something yeah we're just the way yeah it all it all comes together all the different layers and stuff uh the way it's shaped like you said some have triangle shaped right like the yeah very conical angular yeah yeah so that's what because you can see there's a strip that goes just straight over the crown so it obviously didn't anyway so it just didn't do that well uh which is not surprising there's a lot of gen one uh composite helmets that really don't do any better than a steel helmet they just perform differently like with the the deformation the back deformation it's a little it's gonna be usually less on steel or it's gonna crack it whereas on a composite helmet it's just how big that bubble is how close that impact was to the skull and did it catch the round or did it just go right through this did a little bit of both um the the problem that i have with this particular helmet so far is the back side deformation i know on the ech we did that and people would be like oh you die from that that was on a 76251 nato round and there was a one percent chance that you could you know actually recover from that wound versus a zero percent chance when you're not wearing a helmet so that's kind of the whole point about that but back backside deformation is a very real problem and if we're going to talk about if i would personally buy this for protection in like a shit at the fan scenario even though whatever um i'm going to either give it a pass or a fail and this one would get a fail from me unless you've got no other option this is a fail which is going to be better than nothing but uh it's it's not going to be getting a pass from me how about you devin uh i like i said it it's a fail for me too unless you have literally nothing else which that's all all fails are going to be that pretty much so it's like yeah it's it's just a fail uh and it's nothing against south africa the design of this helmet or the integrity of it i've shot helmets from countries that they should have been good they're very you know very developed very stable i guess you want to say and they should have the capability to do really good manufacturing and it sucked so it's nothing against the south africans none of these videos are anything against the engineering of any country or people who design this or use this it's just it is what it is which is why i would do these tests so i just want to take another moment to thank whoever sent me this again i forgot who you were i'm sorry man like i'll probably go through my messages when i get home and and see but i also don't like using names of people in public so that's what that but you know who you are again thank you so much this was actually really cool devin devin was like oh cool you got one of those to test i always want to do that so it made us uh pretty cool or happy to be able to do something this cool so thank you again um if you're one of these people that's going to be complaining that this isn't a new helmet and you know the whatever the heads aren't like human heads and it's not real because of this this and well feel free to hit us up and you know send us this stuff because uh we can afford to fund a certain amount out of pocket which we do but you know like this one i probably wouldn't have been able to afford this at the time if that person hadn't sent sent us this so just something like that and if you want to support the channel financially so we can get cooler stuff eventually you can totally do that a few ways one i have a link to my patreon which is in the description and above that is going to be a link to devin k's youtube channel if you're into this sort of stuff he covers a lot of cool stuff that i don't and vice versa so it's really cool if you want to learn more um he's got a bunch of cool information on his channel so you can go there and also you can become a channel member on my channel by hitting the join button right below this video five bucks a month or more either platform gets you access access to my discord server which is actually a pretty fun time there's a lot of really cool people on there that believe in what i'm doing and um and are just really like-minded and you know it's obviously we share a lot of the same interests and it's really cool to have people doing that so i'm able to either get stuff donated or be able to afford really expensive other helmets that we've shot and are going to shoot doing any kind of shooting video all this stuff costs money blah blah blah which is not your problem because i'm putting up the content for free obviously i get that but it's really cool to be able to do content that i've always wanted to do for years and you guys have always wanted to do because of financial support now if you can't if you want to support our work but you can't do it financially that is totally understandable i totally get that been there but you can still uh support our work by liking this video giving um throwing a comment with what you thought about it and then in the description in the comment section slow down mike you've got this and um subscribing to both of our channels if you haven't already and really a great way to support our work is just to share this video out if you thought this was interesting we certainly did this is so fun to be able to actually do this i wish you guys could all be here but like it's it's so much fun sharing this video out alerts people to our presence that might not have known about us already because bt doesn't generally like anything gun related so the algorithm is unfavorable that kind of thing so sharing this video really helps out there's bees sharing this video really helps support both of our work as well so consider that and um if you're in the third category where you're just like meh i don't like either of you that's fine you have already supported us by watching this video so i greatly appreciate that thank you so much everybody for watching and we'll see you on the next helmet ballistic test