Why did kamikaze pilots in WW2 wear helmets?
I think it was just the idea of being in full uniform for them….they obviously knew they were going to die, but for them honor was everything, and die in complete uniform was the way to go, which ment wearing helments and all….at least that is what I think…..also radios and such were in their helmets so….
To keep their ears warm, goofball. As anyone acquainted with aviation or basic physics knows, the pilot’s helmet has never been intended to provide protection against a crash. If the plane encounters the landscape too abruptly you’re sausage no matter what you’re wearing. The leather or cloth head covering worn by WW2 aviators was a holdover from open cockpit days, when you needed protection against the wind and rain. Closed cockpits had come into general use by WW2, but in the early years at least it was customary to take off and land with the canopy open, apparently in the ill-founded hope that you’d be able to get clear of the plane if it nosed in while you were near the ground. Pilots also wore helmets because they held your radio earphones, but most of all, military bureaucracy being what it was, because regulations required it. When jets came in most air forces switched to the hardened “brain bucket” in use today, but the purpose of this was merely to protect a fighter pilot’s he
