Does anyone have information on "Bristol Type 3" body armor?

[MEversbergII]

Hello,

I am trying to drum up information about a late 70s/early 80s type of British body armor - the "Bristol Type 3" by Bristol Composite Materials.

I first learned of the vest in Martin Brayley's "Modern Body Armor", but it did not have everything I was looking for. From the information I have, I was able to found two more possible (but not confirmed) leads - a patent document (from BCM, but registered in the US in the mid 1980s), and what looks like a museum log entry (no pictures to confirm model, but it does have some of the data I'm after).

I don't think the patent is the right one, as it references the use of feathers (!) as a cushion, which Brayley's source does not. The museum entry does not reference two weapons that Brayley stated were marked as being resistant on the vest (.45 ACP and .38 Special), so I still have my doubts.

Unfortunately, the author has not returned messages asking about this vest type.

If anyone happens to have information I would be grateful if they could share it - my search goes on, but honestly it's hard to find the sort of information I'm looking for on most body armor forms I've gone hunting for.

Specific things I am looking for are:

1) Rated resistances (preferably in terms of grains, caliber, and velocity - something that museum entry DOES have, and may be on the tag of the original)
2) Actual construction method (i.e. X layers of material Y - evidently Kevlar 29 in this case).
3) Weight (at a given size)
4) Unit costs (Brayley's book may have this).
5) User experiences and similar information

For those curious, my main use for this information is actually for use in table top games (see here for some examples of my earlier work), but I am also generally interested in the subject of ballistic defenses and some of the iterations they've gone through over time.

Thanks!

M.

[MAP]

Welcome to the forum MEversburg.

Sorry that I can't help. We deal mostly in WW1-WW2 but hopefully some of our members have a broader collecting interest and might be able to help.

Be patient however, not a very popular topic so might take a while for someone to see this and respond.

[MEversbergII]

Welcome to the forum MEversburg.

Sorry that I can't help. We deal mostly in WW1-WW2 but hopefully some of our members have a broader collecting interest and might be able to help.

Be patient however, not a very popular topic so might take a while for someone to see this and respond.

Hello, and thank you for the welcome!

I did notice the slant here more towards WW1/WW2, and indeed almost did not come here to ask until I spotted an old thread on a helmet also made by Bristol Armor Works.

If it helps anyone, I am reminded that Yugoslavia and Serbia both used a copy of it around 1990. I did find a French-language website that actually mentions this, but frustratingly the only tag photo that has actual ballistic information (rather than just a nominal rating) is too small to read. I have reached out to the site owner again in the hope that they have a higher-res one, but that may not be their own photo.

Curiously, at least some of the Yugoslavian or Serbian copies of the British "Bristol Type 3" seemed to have been manufactured in the US.

This kind of specific information is definitely sometimes hard to find; when I wrote my article on the Ranger variety of body armor, just about every inquiry into its details was met by some pretty hard skepticism as to my motives!

Thanks,

M.

[Composite]

...there's been exchanges here re Bristol-made composite helmets as you've said....and these have been of interest to me......but I don't know what interest there is re Body Armour here. As suggested, let's wait and see.....someone always comes along........

oh....and don't worry about the WW1 / WW2 bit....there's plenty of folk here who do more up-to-date stuff! :-)