Clothing Definitions — definitions of garments and clothing terms from Apparel Search
A flak jacket is a form of protective clothing originally developed by the Wilkinson Sword company during World War II to help protect Royal Air Force air personnel from the flying debris and shrapnel thrown by German anti-aircraft guns — flak, from Fliegerabwehrkanone. The jacket consisted of plates sewn into a waistcoat of ballistic nylon, functioning as an evolved form of plate armour. This page explains its construction, why it proved too bulky for RAF bombers, its adoption by the United States Army Air Forces, and the term's modern use.
Unfortunately, flak jackets proved to be too bulky for wear within the confines of the RAF's standard bomber aircraft, the Avro Lancaster. The Royal Air Force subsequently offered the jackets to the United States Army Air Forces, which adopted them as a Defense Standard. Ultimately, however, the jackets proved to be tragically ineffective, and are now generally considered to be inferior to body armor.
In modern usage, the term flak jacket sometimes refers to contemporary bulletproof vests.
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| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/flak_jacket ). 1/6/06 |
The flak jacket paired an old idea with a new material. The protection was plate — hard pieces positioned over the torso's vital areas, as armour had always worked — but the carrier was a waistcoat of ballistic nylon, a material engineered by the DuPont company, which made the garment flexible and wearable in a way a steel cuirass was not. Its purpose was specific: not to stop a direct bullet, but to stop the fragments — the flying debris and shrapnel of exploding anti-aircraft shells — that wounded aircrew. Against fragments, distributed plates in a textile vest were a rational design.
Its limits were practical. In the cramped Avro Lancaster the jackets were too bulky to wear, and the design passed to the United States Army Air Forces, whose aircraft could accommodate them. Judged as body armour the wartime jacket is now considered inferior to modern vests, which use woven aramid panels and ceramic plates fitted to the body. The word survives more widely than the garment: flak jacket is used loosely for bulletproof vests generally, and figuratively for any protective defence — a survival of the wartime term in the clothing vocabulary alongside the other protective jackets in this section.
A flak jacket is protective clothing developed during World War II to protect air personnel from the debris and shrapnel of anti-aircraft fire. It consisted of titanium plates sewn into a waistcoat made of ballistic nylon, an evolved form of plate armour.
Flak jackets proved too bulky for wear within the confines of the RAF's standard bomber, the Avro Lancaster, so the RAF offered them to the United States Army Air Forces, which adopted them as a Defense Standard.
In modern usage the term flak jacket sometimes refers to contemporary bulletproof vests, though the wartime jackets are now generally considered inferior to modern body armour.