M16 German Helmet

[Neil Hever]

Apparently, early examples had a "square dip" that was later modified. NH

[Pauls1970]

Cheers Neil, the seller thought it might be a B in the steel mill stamp, instead of an E. Looking forward to receiving this one !
Regards
Paul

[Pauls1970]

Hi guys helmet arrived yesterday, have been all over it, patina is consistent all over, I can't find the makers/size mark, or trace of it, but the dome mark is present E 75, would it be possible to trace this 'steel mill' down to a particular helmet manufacturer at all ? The liner band is extremely brittle & has cracked, but is still in one piece just & I would say that the liner has been repaired in the last 20 years or so, using a leather repair patch to hold the a couple of the 'tongues' together. The liner is not 'tight' to the shell, like you would find on an M35 etc, I'm wondering if this is common on these M16s due to the crude way that the liner is attached to the helmet ? The 3 liner rivets (viewed from the exterior) paint & patina wise, look consistent with the helmet's patina, the only slight concern I had was the rear liner rivet, if you look closely enough there is some wear around the rivet (on the helmet surface), which may have been caused by the rivet being loose or originally a bigger headed rivet was present, however viewed from the inside all the prongs seem consistent with having always been there There is an interesting 482 hand mark on the rear liner flap & a 138 marking on the leather liner band itself, wonder what they refer to ? The weight of the helmet is 1.259 kg.
Kind regards
Paul

[Neil Hever]

I think you can attribute any looseness in the liner simply to age. It appears to be pretty intact. I have never seen numbers scrolled into the liner pads. There appears to be a name or some other marking in the rear of the skirt that was removed. My guess is that this helmet went through several hands. NH

[Pauls1970]

Cheers Neil, just checked that detail on the inner rear skirt..... the remains of an old sticky label ! The 3 rivets all have movement, side to side up & down, I'm presuming that these helmets being the first of their kind had these slight differences in comparison to the M35/M31 'modern' design, where the liners are in tight.
Regards
Paul

[Neil Hever]

The sticky paper label was probably post war of some sort. Any time you see a name in a helmet it is usually painted. Regarding the liner, it was replaced with metal later on because the leather was simply not robust enough. The fact that it is intact here is amazing. NH

P.S. The liner pads are most likely filled with horse hair.