We are rapidly building up our collection of period military uniforms in the museum for next year's season. They really are an eye-catcher and because most of them are fully interactive, they are among our most popular items. This set is no exception:
Our period set of First Gulf War uniform and respirator has been on display before, but it has been given a new lease of life with the addition of a number of other uniforms to the museum's display. We can now display the development of uniform and kit from the medieval period to modern wars, ending with this set which includes the following:
The first Gulf conflict, fought by a UN coalition against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, was the first notable kinetic war fought by a western coalition since the Korean War. It had been 10 years since British Forces had last deployed. Waged in defence of Kuwait after an Iraqi invasion, the conflict was the first true ‘media war’, and received extensive unfiltered coverage. It was also the testing ground for a lot of new technology, including the first use of body armour, and improved gas masks (respirators). It also saw Patriot missiles used for the first time and was an early testing ground for guided missile technology, which dominates modern warfare.
Our period set of First Gulf War uniform and respirator has been on display before, but it has been given a new lease of life with the addition of a number of other uniforms to the museum's display. We can now display the development of uniform and kit from the medieval period to modern wars, ending with this set which includes the following:
Mark Mark 6 Combat Helmet
19 S10 Personal Respirator
E Enhanced Combat Body Armour (ECBA) in Desert pattern DPM
This set of clothes dates from that conflict, and it's intriguing to see plate armour return to warfare for the first time since the Medieval period, here in the form of ceramic and kelvar as opposed to plate metal. The technological battle in medieval europe between armour and armour-piercing technology at the individual soldier's level is being repeated in modern conflicts. Below, we see it's first incarnation:
Chain-mail had been industrially produced for professional armies since the rise of the Roman empire, but it tool on new urgency in the high medieval period. The English archers, the scourge of Anglo-French battlefields, were the first real armour-piercing specialist troops and as new technologies like field artillery came of age, armour struggled to keep up. Eventually heavy plate armour superseded chainmail, just as larger ceramic plates have recently replaced kelvar vests in Afghanistan. Let us not forget that between the English civil war and the Falklands war, British troops wore no armoured protection of any sort. We see once again military developments come full circle. Ultimately, the fundamentals of war do not change very much for the soldier or the scientist...
