Hi All
Heres another Andys Rubbish and Ramblings for you. Again, I’m a day early we have a gun show on this weekend….
This time it’s another common utilitarian item, the M16 steel helmet, or with this example it’s what is often referred to by collectors as an M1917 (due to the metal liner band), and it also features camouflage paint.. These Imperial German helmets were once cheap and plentiful, generally most gun shows would have a number of helmets on offer, I remember them being around $50 for a shell, and most in fact were just the shell as the liners seem to have suffered badly over time, the liner system is rather fragile and without proper storage and handling, they are easily damaged. Remembering that a generation or two of children would have played war with these helmets, effectively extending their combat role well beyond the Great War. Other helmets were well looked after, or more due to luck than good management, they were kept in favourable conditions conducive to good preservation. Today, these helmets have become very collectable and above average examples are highly sought after. Camouflaged helmets in particular are an extremely interesting collecting field, individual soldiers following the 1918 directive to camouflage helmets gave us a tremendous amount of variety. The paint was mixed in batches from supplied ingredients, this no doubt accounts for a vast variation in the basic colours used, the talents of the individual applying the paint again gives us variety, choice of colours often depended on the surroundings. Most feature the black dividing strips as per regulation, others were anything but regulation pattern. Each helmet is different, each one demonstrates the individuality of the person that applied this paint scheme, if you are fortunate sometimes there are little gems hidden in the coarse brush strokes like he occasional thumb print, accidentally left in the wet paint, maybe an initial is worked into the dividing lines, possibly a legible name written in the skirt, battle damage, leaving us with a snapshot frozen in time or some other quirky feature.
The Steel helmet as we know it first appeared in late January 1916, the very first being the “square dip”type helmets, these are not often encountered and I’m yet to study one first hand.
The steel helmets did have a lot of variation with the liners, liner bands evolved and the leather suspension system and pads had their fair share of variation.
Thirteen companies are known to have produced helmet shells, each with their own manufacturing code, some made only one or two sizes, others made many. The sizing ranged from a very small 60 through to the vary large size 68. The most often encountered manufacturer seems to be E.T or Eisenhuttenwerke. So this gives fairly unlimited of scope when it comes to a collecting pathway.
Camouflage, the camouflage of helmets and equipment was a fairly late war innovation, and was a general order, the “Ludendorff directive” was issued on the 7th of July 1918. If you are interested in adding a camouflaged helmet to your collection I would recommend that you do your homework first, study known originals, consult with experienced collectors and don’t rush into the first one you see. That Camouflage colour scheme can greatly enhance the price of an average helmet, they are also fairly easy to replicate and by looking at eBay, there has been quite an industry built around producing “original” camouflage helmets for sale to the unweary. Some of these helmets can look very convincing and are professionally done and are produced for one purpose, to extract the maximum amount of money from the unweary.
One of the best works for reference is a recently published book written by Oliver Lock, Stahlschutzhelme, The German Steel Combat Helmet 1915-1918. This is a fantastic book with excellent imagery that is well worth the investment. You will find the author on most WW1 military pages.