The Evolution of the Japanese Army Steel Helmet (1918-1945) Revised and Expanded Version
Article about: The Evolution of the Japanese Army Steel Helmet (1918-1945) Prolog During the Russo-Japanese War, the army received a letter dated 28th April 1905 from a private inventor, who had the idea t
Nick, do you think it possible that this order or regulation issued in 1943 was as a result of white painted helmets having been seen in the field prior to this date? Almost like a reminder that it was not to be done?
It reminds me of the order you posted about the felt army caps, the issuing of which was not permitted to frontline units, but only to home based units, but seemed it had to be re-iterated as some had been? I realise it would only be speculation but perhaps it is possible?
No, Russ, it was actually the other way around. As I always say, Japanese soldiers, as an inbred mindset, did not modify their gear while in service. It was more because they were conditioned not to tamper with factory specs that they needed to be told about cases where active camouflage was desirable. Though ship camo manuals had been frequently issued before, camo rules for vehicles had not been issued before this 1943 publication. Like other armies, like the Germans, camouflage awareness came proportional to loss of air supremacy, so 1943 was not really late in that regard. Helmets were merely mentioned to give comprehensive coverage of all weapons items.
White is the most commonly available paint color in any home, as most people have white walls. It is a lot more natural to think that white helmets exist in overseas collections for such household reasons rather than pre-45 snow.
From the onset, felt caps were regarded as an inferior spec and it was also not desirable to have a mix of types in one unit, so the distribution restrictions for these Rinji-Seishiki items were enforced from the very start, not as reminders, due to repeated violations. It was not a question of not permitting them to be issued to certain units, but of following a principle of providing the very best to the men doing the actual fighting, and having the rear troops make do with what was available. The IJA was extremely methodical in planning ahead for such material shortages.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 06-06-2018 at 12:07 PM.
Here are two examples of helmet insignia irregularities that got captured as magazine covers during the war, both from 1943 issues.
The March cover of IJA soldiers sharing a smoke with a Chinese comrade, shows the middle soldier with a visor cap star on his Type 90 helmet. This would have been the result of not having the correct star replacement after replacing a liner, etc, as such a switch would not have been tolerated in the army as a private preference customization by a soldier. Supply shipment lists only start to show full sets of helmet replacement parts towards the late part of he war. That suggests field repairs were officially organised towards the end, but at the time of the photo, such proper repairs probably were not available in the field and the visor cap star must have been allowed as a temporary solution.
The other cover might seem to prove that army stars were sometimes painted in another color like white or yellow, but this is actually a civil defense helmet featuring a painted army-like star in violation of rules prohibiting use of military symbols by civilians. The civilian would have been reprimanded by MPs for such offences.
Tutorial : How to Tighten the Straps of your Kabuto
Let’s end the Type 90 story by showing you below the various chin strap tie methods used on helmets by the navy.
1. This is the way to tie the straps on the Model 2 cherry blossom helmets bought from the Army. But this is the early style method. Later the straps were lengthened to allow carrying by hanging on backpacks, which lead to the method shown as 5.
2. This is how the navy wore the Model 3 Army T 90s around 1937-38. The point was tying it in the back to prevent the helmet from dipping forward when you had to suddenly duck and crawl. Two variations of how it went around the chin are shown.
3. Typical prewar method for the Model 3 navy helmet. When wearing a gasmask they employed the so-called necktie knot that allowed easy adjustment of tightness and could easily be undone by a single pull.
4. Used on the Model 3s during WW2 when they made the straps short to conserve material. These were knotted at both ears and could be put on quickly just by tying the ends together.
5. The method used for the paratrooper helmet developed in 1941, as well as for the late style cherry blossomed helmets.
Did the army fix their helmets differently? If so how?
Thank you
Please start a thread of your own for "what does it say?" questions. Otherwise, you already read my explanations to both style of markings here. B markings were not used on helmets, so that was added by the soldier or unit.
Let's kill another old wives tale about helmets, normally paraded as being "a consensus among collectors". It's called "the ring around the helmet myth".
This uniquely North American collector myth seriously believes that paint brushed on around the helmet like a headband was necessary, because the Japanese stacked up newly painted helmets for shipping and they needed touch-up every time after delivery, because the stacking caused scuffing at the midsection during shipment.
I can understand this being plausible to North Americans, as I have worked in a factory in Canada for 5 years and know that average North American factory workers have no comprehension of quality control. I still remember the astonished look on their faces when I told them that workers producing the Lexus models get paid the same wages as those producing the lowly Starlet (or whatever goes as the poor man's model now).
Among other things, I was a Toyota-trained quality control expert as well as Kaizen-instructor, and even I am impressed how tightly the IJA managed quality. In that quality-minded culture and especially during wartime, when absolutely no waste could be tolerated, such a brain-dead system as knowingly and continuously getting helmets scratched during shipment would have got you in front of a firing squad. The Japanese production mentality immediately responds to things like scratches and prevents them at source, as redoing work downstream is a total waste of resources.
That kind of stupidity NEVER happens in Japan, but was an everyday occurence in North America. But when I tried to show them how quality control should be done, I even got warned "Nick, you are making a lot of workers feel uneasy with your fancy Toyota ideas. If you continue, you'll need to watch your back in dark corridors". So I gave up and focused on my main responsibility of marketing instead. Needless to say they continued to produce at very high defect rates, and the company regularly air-freighted replacements to Japanese clients, who naturally complained. It was as embarrassing as if seeing them peeing in their pants like infants and it pained me deeply to see this in my own company, but in the end, factory production was not my responsibility. Returning to the high precision environment of Formula One Racing was like a breath of fresh air that brought me back to sanity again.
I got carried away discussing quality control, but why the ring?
Helmet shells got spray-painted before installing the liner. Of the split-pin rivets holding the liner in place, the stars already came painted by immersion, but the side rivets were normally totally unfinished. So after assembly, side rivets exposed their unfinished silver heads. The helmet band was one way of painting the rivet heads. But not all followed this method, so there must have been factories that sprayed the rivet heads before use. Either way, prongs on these pins will normally not be finished inside for this reason.
What I consider another brain-dead myth is the one that claims the Navy stopped production of small sized helmets towards the end of the war. Unfortunately I do not have production statistics yet to show positive proof of this fallacy, but it goes against the fundamental rule that new soldiers become ever smaller in a drawn out war. In Japan, the soldiers mobilized in the beginning were a minimum of 155 cm tall and they chose the biggest guys first, but later they reached down to 145.5 cm in height, but it did not stop even there in the end.
So is it now the collector consensus that more than half of Navy men did not get helmets anymore? These smaller men were ideal for third class units like the NLF, which historically were composed of men unsuitable for service in other navy branches.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 08-01-2018 at 10:09 AM.
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