From: Steve Grammont (islander@midmaine.com)
Date: Tue Mar 26 2002 - 22:41:32 PST
Gerry,
>As you say, these jackets were designed to stop splinters and shrapnel,
>nothing else. But since more casualties in combat of the kind these vests
>were designed for are caused by exactly those things than direct contact
>with a projectile, they probably saved a few lives.
A friend of mine owes his life to one of these. While supporting his
fellow Marines with 155s in the Gulf they got pegged with Iraqi counter
battery fire. He got wounded (pretty good I gather), but said he would
have been a different statistic if he had not been wearing his frag vest.
I have also heard that the flack jackets (aka frag vests) can actually be
DANGEROUS to wear when hit by certain types of high veolocity small arms
rounds in just the "wrong way". According to ballistics theory, rounds
can penetrate the Kevlar weave in splinter form and then break up prior
to hitting flesh. In other words, a high velocity shotgun hit instead of
a "clean" bullet. Not sure if the theory is borne out in fact or not,
but it does sound plausible.
Steve
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