mkII (&mkI or earlier) Helmets Steel, British & Commonwealth, show yours

[Jerry B]

Attachment 937542Attachment 937543Attachment 937544
found this south wales border's helmet, interesting extra numbers stamped in the rim, 38 vero liner and 39 ec co shell

What a great helmet

[karkee]

Just picked up this 1941 Australian MkII from a local show for $35 and I'm wondering if I should restore it to its wartime appearance by removing the name. Is anybody familiar with a Chancellor Holmer? The only reference I could find was a chancellor at Oregon State University in the 1970s...

[Composite]

'picked this up the other day....'sold as "SHIPWRIGHT"....and possibly is....what do you think?.....but I thought I picked out something above the white lettering....and now I've got it there's defo something there.........It LOOKS like "WA_P_AS"....pretty sure about the first two (which makes you think "WARDEN"...but I'm not convinced)...and it LOOKS like an "S" at the end.....what could it be?

'taken a few snaps to get you going.....'answers on a postcard to...........

Attachment 965540Attachment 965541Attachment 965539

[Composite]

'thought I'd keep extending this thread rather than start a new one....

This one was being sold as a "Quartermasters" helmet....but it turned out to be a 3-holer so not military. It was almost certainly destined to be a Queens Messenger helmet although the condition suggests it wasn't used much if at all.

Sankey shell (date unclear), TTC 1940 liner

[JohnF]

Here is an interesting helmet I have had for a while which once belonged to a member of the Royal Canadian Artillery, its british made and has a thick coat of what seems like tar, which has been painted over, on top also of a partially visible red and blue flash, interestingly and with some well done research borrowed from another ww2 site I was able to read a little of its history (see below) too bad I am not able to read the service no, I did find though the Kew archives hold documents for this battery but would cost nearly 400pounds to have them copied and sent anyway

"this was a short lived...only four months...super heavy battery manning a pair of 9.2inch railway guns in Kent in 1940 and into 1941.

Gen. McNaughton was asked to supply any Canadian artillery personnel available from the artillery holing units in the Uk in the summer of 1940 to help man some of the railway guns that were being turned out of storage depots and railway yards. Several had been refurbished and sent to France with the BEF - where they were lost...but there were quite a few more in store, seemingly a number that were still being constructed or were under test as of 1918 and the Armistice. Thankfully, they survived two decades of neglect...



Anyway - a order was sent out to the artillery holding units in the first week of September 1940...and some time later "X" Super Heavy Battery seems to have come together with its first HQ being at Littlestone in Kent - the east coast of Romney Marsh, actually!



A couple of other references indicate that the "X" Battery...which had a WWI career...was shortlived in 1940 - it was "operational" for only four months...and was deactivated in February 1941, its guns being handed over to a British-manned Super Heavy battery. Working backwards from February therefore...it appears that it was made operational in October 1940, and its HQ shifted to Kingsnorth near Ashford...and the guns themselves are often referred to in discussions of the Cross Channel Artillery Duel as being positioned on a siding in Golden Wood, a piece of woodland south of Ashford near Ruckinge....and looking at the 1940 overlay on GoogleEarth, there is indeed the trace of an old siding off the main line as it runs through Golden Wood." quote phylo_roadking ww2talk.com

[tinlid]

Interesting, thanks.

[JohnF]

I was talking to a collector friend about the amount of helmets in Canada with no liners that appeared in the past couple of years, he told me that a Toronto scrap dealer had brought a vast quantity of helmets surplus in the hope of turning a profit in scrap, though he soon discovered because of the metal type he was unable to scrap them, they ended up in storage and started to trickle out a few years back, none had liners so it was presumed the scrap dealer had destroyed them already....they can be spotted (like the one I just showed) as they have damage to the paint from the chinstrap lugs of the helmet sitting on top.......

[FinMC]

Well, this is my only Commonwealth helmet, but I think it's a good piece; it's an Australian MKII Brodie (thought it was NZ, not sure - it's still under investigation ) Like they say, a picture speaks one thousand words...

[JohnF]

first new helmet for me in ages, standard Canadian made CL C shell but original net and scrim, the scrim knots have flattened like the helmet net ones so it shows some age, also holds the shape of the helmet, might not be ww2, ,but looks a neat set up, sadly one age split to the net

[SMP]

Here's an early MKII I picked-up recently. Lots of character IMO.