Why I hate Cheek Filter Gas Masks

Right, here's the video. Let's complain about cheek filter gas masks. So why do I have such a hatred for cheek filter masks? I've talked about this I think many times before but I don't know if I've always covered it in the best detail I possibly could. If you think prior to cheek filter gas masks, in World War II most gas masks had a filter. It was either attached to a hose and you couldn't really detach it easily or it was a screw-in one to the side of the mask or onto the front of the mask. For example the German masks all had screw-on filters pretty much in World War II. The late American and British masks had screw-in 60mm filters. So that was the way you were going to do it. Everybody by the end of World War II realised having lightweight exchangeable filters is a good idea to change. If you like the filter is the magazine for a rifle or a submachine gun or whatever. It's a lot more practical to load a gun with something that's pre-loaded that you just shove in. Take the old one out, put the new one in is to actually do something a lot more complex to change it. So that was the way everybody was going. Then the Americans for some reason had this really bright idea that wasn't bright at all. But what would be a really good idea would actually be to have filters inside the mask. Now I suppose in concept it might be an interesting idea because they said they wanted a mask that was really lightweight. You know that it wasn't bulky filters it was like these kind of cheek pad filters and you know that would just give you total protection from everything. It'd be Of course this didn't materialise. The problem was is that these filters are incredibly difficult to change. Now people have told me in the comments sometimes on authentic M17s because I don't actually have an American M17 because of the stupid export laws regarding military surplus in America. Actual M17s apparently were made of a better rubber so installing the filters wasn't such a pain in the arse but it was still annoying. On these Warsaw Pact versions it's even worse apparently but okay let's have a look at it. Basically in the mask you have a pouch here which I'm really not going to be able to show very well on camera. You have to stretch the mask open, shove the filter in, close it again. Sounds a lot easier than it actually is in practice. When I'm in a non-stress situation I'm trying to do it there's often been times I've been literally sat there for like 15 minutes trying to get these filters in. When I most recently did it with my Czech M10, my second one because I had the M10M before although I'd done the procedure several times I ended up just ripping the rubber to get them in. I think if I had to change cheek filters on these masks again I'd just get a knife and carefully cut the pouches to be wider to sit the filters in because to keep the filters held in the tension of the rubber means it has to be you know the rubber has to be tighter than the sort of gap the filter goes in which doesn't make changing them easy. There's one big flaw isn't there? You can't change the filter from the outside. So on any other mask you've got the mask on, you realise your filter is going to run out, you have a spare filter, you just unscrew one, put it away, get your new filter out, screw that back on, you're good to go. You can't do that with this. You'd have to take the mask off to change the filters which is obviously a death sentence in somewhere where there's a lot of chemical weapons around. Even if you could just take the mask off and really quickly change the filter you're still going to get vapour and all sorts of horrible stuff inside the mask as well. So the other problem was of course that these masks ended up being heavier than the masks they were meant to replace. It's a bit like what happened with the L85 when it went into service with the British Army to replace the SLR. The first generation of them were so bad that basically they didn't have any advantage over the SLRs that came before it, just drawbacks. They ended up having what was meant to be a lightweight assault rifle that ended up being heavier than a battle rifle despite being shorter and everything else so it was a nightmare. And this is sort of what happened with these masks. They were designed to be much lighter than the American M9 masks before it and just be an all-round general good mask. They actually ended up being bulkier than M9s and heavier than M9s. Now the XM28 did fix that but the XM28 never really properly went into service and it was a bit of too little too late. By the time they were putting the XM28 sort of into service I guess they just sort of thought maybe we should just go to 40mm masks but that didn't come around until a lot later. And the other silly thing is the M9 mask stayed in service because I think somebody somewhere actually realised that the M9 was a better mask than the M17 series. So what happened was they basically kept the M9 for people who worked with high concentration of chemical weapons, you know, cleanup crews and all sorts of things like that. And I think that speaks volumes about the amount of faith they had in this mask. If they said we've got this brand new really cool mask, if you're actually going to encounter chemical weapons, best you keep the old mask. So, yeah, there you go. I don't think, yeah, there's much more to say really regarding that. Now, not everything was awful on the M17, they did start implementing some interesting features, like most of the M17s had a voice diaphragm on, you know, that's a good thing. Although the Americans had put voice diaphragms on older masks, the M9 itself didn't have one. So, you know, that was good. But there's all sorts of, you know, problems like that where they'd implemented features that would have been good on their own, but, you know, they hadn't, you know, really got around to doing anything else. Now, the M17, of course, could have been a good mask, but I don't think the cheek filter idea works. If you're going to do cheek filters, I think how they need to work is like modern external ones, where you've got a filter that maybe has that pork chop shape, and maybe it just clips on, you know, like how 3M filters work and things like that. You could have had a mask that was much narrower in the cheeks there, there was like the valves there, and you clip the filters on. Like what the Avon M50 does on the Scott GSR, the Avon M50 being a better example because the filters are actually smaller. But, yeah, the M17, I guess, is a lesson in how not to design a gas mask. You know, I think it was maybe the Coventer tank, I can't remember if it was the Coventer, but it was an example of a tank. This is, you know, they used it as an example afterwards of how not to design a tank, and that's what the M17 is really to gas masks. It does everything wrong, in a sense. Yes, there were some good features done with it, but you couldn't put those on the other gas masks. I think it was the M17A1 that had this really stupid resuscitation tube thing as well, where the idea is you wear the mask, you get this tube, and you put it on somebody's face if you need to revive them, but if they don't have a gas mask on and the gas attack, they're dead anyway because you couldn't revive somebody through another gas mask. You put this on their face, and then you were meant to, you know, like try and give them the sort of kiss of life, breathe air into their lungs through this tube. However, the problem was apparently the valves weren't very good, so sometimes if you do that it would just cause everything to backflow up the tube, and then you'd get gas inside your mask. So again, it was another feature added on that was worse than not having the feature. Obviously, the US kept using these into the Gulf War, and I think that was when they finally came to the realisation that maybe we need to get masks like everybody else that take a small filter on to the side of the mask you screw in, and that's what they did when they eventually went to the XM40 and the M40. But this is kind of, as I said, a lesson in why gas mask is not a good mask. As I said, it's heavy as well. I mean, I know this is a clone of an M17, not an authentic M17, but every clone of an M17 I've held has been heavy. When I've looked at the weight of M17s, they do end up being heavier than the things that came before it. As I said, in terms of cheek filter masks, the XM28 is so much better than this thing. That does a lot more things right. Sure, yeah, it was designed for riot agents and not actual chemical weapons, but I'm sure they could have made a silicone mask for actual use, you know, similar to the XM28 if they wanted to. But as said, the issue is the filters, if you're going to do cheek filters, need to go on the outside, not the inside of the mask. So there you go. This is the reason I really don't like this thing. Let me just quickly pop it on so you can see it in action. It's really uncomfortable. That's not a proper airtight seal, but there you go. I'd have to really do up the bottom straps more and it's pinching my nose. Yeah, not a great mask, it has to be said. So there you go. Maybe that's cleared up for some people why I detest these masks so much. I find them interesting as collectibles, but it's kind of a lesson in how not to design a gas mask. If these came around closer to WW1, I could actually understand, you know, they thought you'd, you know, went down that route. But they already had removable 60mm filters by this point. Just boggles the mind why you take something that works and then say, let's go to something that doesn't. The old expression goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And that's the lesson we learn with gas masks.