MP turtle project

[James C]

i took a chance on this rather tired looking turtle ,it has no liner ,no chinstrap and the liner pin is missing but what took my eye was the rather faded red band and MP steciling ,at first glance it looked like somebody had tryed to reveal this with a fine emery paper so was slightly disappointed but now in hand things arent so bad ,luckily this fading is caused by a matt olive drab overpaint so it has now become my autumn project to restore to its former glory ,ive started to carefully remove the overpaint with a soft cloth and paint paste and already im seeing a glossy finish beneath ,as i continue to clean it has thrown up another surprise with these corporal chevrons ill post more as this resto moves along so stay tuned folks

[HARRY THE MOLE]

Is that blue I see underneath? I'd better get a lot closer and have a better look!

[FALLSCHIRMJAGER]

Great stuff James, I am really looking forward to seeing it once you have brought the original surface back to life! Leon.

[timothy]

Nice British turtle James I know nothing about them that looks like a good one to find. timothy

[meyle77]

looking forward to see a finished project !

[Steelhead10]

Great helmet I am also looking forward to see the finished job.

[James C]

thanks for your interest gents im trying to research which branch of the corps of the military police it belongs too but am struggling to positively id and cant find any referance pictures of the helmet in use ,my findings might indicate air force police or provost wing (red caps) but if anybody can clarify this and perhaps provide a few pictures it would be of a great help ,thanks james

[greatwhite]

Go on son, so glad you have taken this on, to easy to walk past pieces like good luck i am sure you will enjoy doing this.
Steve

[Opex]

Very nice and surprising discovery of the MP markings James, excellent project which I will look forward to seeing once completed

[Watchdog]

Hi James,

It is great to see one of these helmets that really were quite common at one time.

In answer to your question I can confirm that these markings were worn by units of the Corps of Royal Military Police from the time that the MkIII was introduced. They were still plain old CMP until the Royal prefix was granted by the Crown in 1947 in recognition of war time service. The same markings were worn on earlier MkII helmets but on the MkIII (as far as I know) the MP and rank markings were exclusively decals rather than paint. The markings were never removed but were covered up with the rough NATO green IRR finish when the Cold War got a bit more than just political. I was serving with RMP in BAOR when the MkVI helmet was introduced and we had to backload the old MkIII (which some were) and MkIV helmets. At that time they were all covered with hessian, nets and scrim (very fashionable at that time!) which had to be removed prior to backloading. To my astonishment I found that whilst many were painted NATO green at lot of the older ones had not been overpainted at all and were resplendant in Brunswick gloss green with these very markings!

Being something of a magpie (like most squaddies) I was wont to squirrel away anything I could see a future use in and due to my position managed to sort out a bunch with markings from LCPL to Major. I kept these for years in a box in my attic when (you know what comes next don't you? ) during preparation for another posting my wife got all pear shaped about the amount of "rubbish" I was lugging around. So, in a fit of picque I cleared out a lot of the aforesaid "rubbish" to the dump and these ten (yes ten!) lids were amongst it . Women, can't beat 'em, pity that!

However, I couldn't quite go completely through with it and managed to hide one which I still have somewhere. I'll dig it out in the next day or so and post it here.

Good luck with the restoration, there are not many left now (sorry about that!)

Regards

Mark