Mystery solved! Heavy two piece shipboard helmet in period newsreel footage

[NARVIK]

The other day I was perusing YouTube videos featuring the Imperial Japanese Navy. I was particularly interested in any footage of shipboard helmets in use. I was hoping to perhaps get a glimpse of a heavy shipboard helmet of the more common variety, but what I found instead really surprised me.

I posted this information up on WAF and GHW2, and thought I would share it on this forum. Thanks in particular to Nick for taking the trouble to identify the actual original newsreel this clip was featured in! Without his native language skills and extensive knowledge, we still wouldn't know that this rare helmet, originally considered to be an odd late war variant for suicide boat pilots, was apparently in use as early as 1943.

Here are screenshots showing a sailor with this helmet standing next to some SNLF troops during an air attack exercise. Nick informs us that the newsreel footage is dated July 13, 1943, and was taken somewhere in the southwestern Pacific.









Here is the link to the original 1943 newsreel, as provide by Nick on WAF

[NARVIK]

Here are some pictures I found on the internet of one in a collection.

[RussM]

That really is a great discovery Scott, well done!

Regards

Russ

[Nick Komiya]

The the original weekly new reel is this reel 162 from 17th November 1943
日本ニュース　ç� �¬ï¼‘６２号｜日本� �ƒ‹ãƒ¥ãƒ¼ã‚¹ï½œNHK 戦争証言アーカã� �¤ãƒ–ス
The one that Narvik put up is a compilation from various Wochenschaus

[Jareth]

My example