M1 Medic - Korean War

[mdk220]

[plumbob]

Please don’t take this the wrong way but the corking seems a bit uneven, what I mean is that its a bit sparse in areas and some of the grains seem quite big.
Also for a helmet that has many dents on the top there seems to be no sign of cork or paint lose in that area, just about all my helmets have lost cork and paint on this area.
I hope it is a good one for you, paint jobs are always a hard one to call.
Happy new year
Rod

[hellschickie]

I agree with plumbob its a lovely helmet and great for display, but it does look very new a bit too new the paint. Other than that I leave it to the more M1 experts to judge.

[mdk220]

No problem and that is why I put this helmet up for comments - I have to expect the good, the bad and the ugly - since the helmet is definitly a front seam helmet made during WW2 (along with the westinghouse liner) maybe the helmet was repainted for the Korean War and the cork was not removed and replaced with the sand texture - as this helmet would be around 5 to 6 years old before the Korean War started.
There is more wear to the rim but this is expected with the different type of metal used for the rim - As a note there is thining to the cork where dents are in the top of the helmet as my pictures are not a closeup of this area. If you have this in hand and run your hands over the cork from front to back the cork is definitely alot thinner and smoother on top. Maybe the dents were from WW2 and the repaint covered up most of the scratches and since a medic used this during the Korean war, maybe not much wear to the lid as he might have not seen much if any combat.

This is definitely a helmet you need to have in hand as there is wear and patina

[gel65]

Hello front seam and rear seam helmets are both ww2 production, I've seen and held many helmets from vets that are wartime that are rear seam. Other than that the cork does not really bother me on this helmet it looks good. The medics symbols look like repros painted to me. Very new and fresh paint almost looks like it was sprayed on with a stecil.

[hellschickie]

Hello front seam and rear seam helmets are both ww2 production, I've seen and held many helmets from vets that are wartime that are rear seam. Other than that the cork does not really bother me on this helmet it looks good. The medics symbols look like repros painted to me. Very new and fresh paint almost looks like it was sprayed on with a stecil.

I always thought that the WW2 us m1 helmets had only front seam, interesting to know Gel65..