JemmyExperimental British armor and dagger-gauntlet, WW1, ~1917
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PugJesushttps://media.piefed.social/posts/dv/dT/dvdTPAuq7KwdMp2.webp
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Iron Man v0.3
I immediately thought of The Rocketeer when I saw this, which is basically proto-Iron Man, so this all checks out.
Probably never made it out of the prototype stage when they realized it was no match for mechanized warfare. They were still figuring this out during WWI, and many young men payed the price for the lesson with their lives.
Such panoplies as these were actually the cutting edge of warfare at the time - both sides were trying to figure out the best mix of armor and melee weapons for trench raiders, who dealt with close-combat on the regular.
I think all melee weaponry went right out the window when they introduced the The Winchester Model 1897, a shotgun known simply as ‘The Trench Gun’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1897
Imagine running through a trench and getting fired on up close by someone pumping this shotgun in quickly repeated blasts
Slam-fire!
I was taught to use shotguns for hunting geese when I was young … I started out with the 410 gauge when I was about eight … then moved up to 20 and finally 12 gauge by the time I was 12. Fun times, never had a pump action shotgun tho as they were considered too dangerous and wasteful for hunting.
The noise of those blasts made me shudder tho. We never wore hearing protection because my dad is an old traditional hunter and trapper that never knew those kinds of safety ideas. Every blast without hearing protection and your ears simply start loudly ringing …. a second shot, the ringing is even louder .. the third shot, you no longer hear ringing because you no longer hear anything … the fourth shot, you only feel and can’t hear any more. It would take about ten or fifteen minutes of ringing and your hearing would come back. Then we’d repeat it again …. all day long! I usually sat with at least one brother and my dad shooting shotguns in a blind to hunt birds and I always noticed this happening with every succeeding shot. I thought it was normal, my dad thought it was normal and we never thought out it.
Even after hunting for a day listening to about 30-40 blasts all day long, you’d have minor ringing but it would be about a day or two of minor ringing before it all faded away. Little did we know but we had permanently damaged much of our hearing.
Now I have tinnitus and I know it is definitely from this experience.
I can only imagine WWI and WWII veterans coming home with permanent hearing damage on top of all the trauma they had to live with.
Still happens today, unfortunately - “Your tinnitus is not service-related” is a bitter refrain you hear from many vets trying to get help from the VA here in the US.