ww2 Hungarian helmets

[RVLucy]

Late war, double maker marked Hungarian helmet. GY64-MAVAG64. Rarer type with GY style rear loop. Line seems to be period replaced since it's factory liner could be a late war type as well. Retains 95% of matte, greenbrown factory paint and has been overpainted in a yellowish field green and was camoed with some grey green. Found in Austria.

I have come rather belatedly to this very informative post, and it has certainly helped clarify my understanding of Hungarian Stahlhelm. i have a number of examples, war-time and postwar from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Finland and Bulgaria. One these also bares both the Györ stamp on the left rim and the MAVAG stamp at the rear. Like you example the rivets for the rear loop are the flat Györ type. The liner is also interesting as, instead of the usual I-27 arrangement with a stuffed cushion under each pad, there is a long cloth tube, filled with horsehair, attached to the liner band by leather loops - I believe fire helmets have a similar arrangement. I also have a Bulgarian reissue 35M helmet, made by MAVAG which has a similar liner, but the loops attaching the horsehair filled cloth tube are cloth.

Do you have an explanation to these double markings? Were these perhaps helmets salvaged from the Györ plant and finished by MAVAG, You will note from the photo of the rear skirt that mine has two acceptance stamps.
Roger

[easternwarfront]

Hi Roger!
Hopefully we can present the first, detailed textbook of hungarian helmets from 1917-1956.
Your example is a tipical late war example, produced after april 1944. On the 13th of april 1944 the Magyar Waggon és Gépgyár in Győr was brutally bombed down by 163 USAF B-17 heavy bombers therefore this major plant was perished and never produced helmets again. Circa 50000 helmets has been saved from the ruins and transported to Budapest so MÁVAG completed them adding their own marking too. That's why you can see both maker's mark in the same helmet. I call this type of liner as late war type however it can be originated from civil defense liners but from late 1943, early 1944 it became a common factory applied variation in both civil defense and combat helmets. Always made of pigskin instead of the standard, high quality goat or sheep leather. Green liner band indicates original factory application. It seems that these helmets were in different phases of production so the majority has MÁVAG style rear loop attached but occasionally you can find examples with GY characteristics.
Typical late war helmets feature:
Brownish green matte paint
Latewar style pigskin liner
Alu chinstrap buckle

Best regards
Attila

[RVLucy]

Hello Attila,
Thank you for the explanation of the dual markings on my helmet. Here are a few more photos of it.
As you can see, it does have the larger flat headed rivets for the rear bracket that you say is characteristic of Györ helmets. Unfortunately the buckle is missing so I don't know if it was brass or aluminium.
regards
Roger

[RVLucy]

Here are two Bulgarian reissue 35Ms, presumably taken after Bulgaria changed sides in 1944. One (MAVAG64) has the original liner (again late war) and the short end of the chin-strap (with aluminium buckle) but has been repainted, and the long chin-strap has been crudely replaced.


The other a MAVAG62 has a post-war Bulgarian liner but has retained its original straps (with a brass buckle)

Roger

[easternwarfront]

Very nice helmets Roger! I'm 99% sure that your double marked helmet had alu buckle originally however sporadic appearence of non regular helmet parts does happen. Especially GY helmets have been observed with blue D rings, it seems that from 1943 the factory application of spare parts from civil defense stocks became common probably due to shortage of supplies. There is evidence that D-rings, liner retaining rivets were purchased from contractors prepainted in green or blue. I also have helmets from Bulgaria, very interesting to see those captured hungarian 35M helmets reissued after the war.

[RVLucy]

WW1 helmets reissued circa 1938 by the hungarian army and were used during the second world war aswell. All are M17 berndorfers in my collection though austrian M17s and german M16s do exist too. Some helmets had received 35M style airvents and rear loop some had not. Paint is also varying from ww1 isonzobrown to ww2 hungarian greenbrown. Not every helmet has been repainted nor overpainted so some of these old modells still have it's original isonzobrown finish. o.

Here are a couple of Great War Hungarian helmets I have.
The first an unchanged Krupp-Berndorf M17(Stahlhelm nach deutschem Muster aus ungarischem fertigung), the acceptance stamp shows it was issued in Mateocz, now part of Slovakia but then in pre-Trianon Hungary.

Next, an Austrian M17 marked BGB 66 (Brüder Gottlieb u.Bruchbar, Br̀ünn) with an interwar Hungarian chin-strap, but otherwise unaltered. I got it from an ebay vendor in Budapest.

The other I found in Vienna, an Austrian M17 of unknown manufacture, with a Hungarian rear loop added, then taken over by the Czechs after the War and reissued as a civil defence helmet.

Roger

[RVLucy]

Finnish-hungarian M38 helmet directly from the vet's family. It has an awesome camo pattern on it, this one is from my top10 hungarian helmets I think. DR66.

Here is my camouflaged Finnish m/38, it's a DM66 (MAVAG), I got it about 10 years ago from the Finnish collector Jukka Juutalainen.

Roger

[RVLucy]

The hungarian 35M helmet was developed with the help of the german ET factory and followed the design of the new german model. However the new M31 Schubert liner system would have been too expensive due to patent protection so hungarian high command chose the vintage german M27 liner system as a less expensive alternative. Minor modifications did take place for instance hungarian liners were manufactured with a metal band instead of the leather stave. Liner retaing rivets were placed further back so chinstrap D-rings and the liner itself could be fixed at the same time with a single piece of metal pin. Time saving innovation and cost cutting aswell.

I thought it might be of interest to show, for comparative purposes an original German I-27 liner.
This bars the stamp of
R. LARSEN
Berlin S.W.48
1927
as well as H.B.A.B. which stands for “Heeresbeschaffungsamt Berlin” Located on Friedrichstraße, it was responsible for issuing or selling equipment to officers.

[easternwarfront]

Nice helmets Roger! As for the M27 liner could you measure the width of the inner leather liner between the pads and the distance between the pads? We know that in the early phases of the development of hungarian 35M at least two different prototypes were differentiated mentioned as 35M and 36M. However there also could be others in this transitional period. Unfortunetly no data has surfaced so far regarding the differences but presently the most conventional theory says that the standard hungarian 35M helmet we know today was the 36M originally but has been renamed by time as 35M. Probably the original 35M had german style liner retaining rivets. There is one example in my collection. I also attached the standard "Berndorfer" ink acceptance stamp, if your helmet has a different stamp that brings further questions to answer in the future because theoretically these helmets were issued in Berndorf. Here you can see different examples of ww1 helmets. Factory refurbishment did take place by MÁVAG but the majority of these vintage helmets were left unaltered or were overpainted, repaired among field conditions only.

[RVLucy]

The band on my I-27 measures 17x18.5mm, the distance between the pads is 6 cm.

I also attached the standard "Berndorfer" ink acceptance stamp, if your helmet has a different stamp that brings further questions to answer in the future because theoretically these helmets were issued in Berndorf.

As you can see the Übernahmsorgan acceptance stamp on my Berndorf M17 is pretty worn and blurry. comparing it with yours, it may indeed read Berndorf not Mateocz.