USN M-1 Paint ID

[MySonsDad]

Came across this beat up old shell and because of what appears to be some US Navy paint brush handy work, I and couldn’t pass it up.

The shell itself is a front seem Schlueter. The inside of the shell appears to be the original OD paint. The outside of the shell has a couple of layers of paint, the outer most coat a dark green, common to many post war refurbished helmets I have seen, I’m guessing this helmet was put back into the system after serving time with the USN and received this final coat of paint.

The coat of paint partially hidden under the dark green is red and a light shade of blue. It looks as though about the upper 1/3 of the shell was painted red and the lower 2/3 blue, all the way down to rim. There are spots that the red shows through the blue, but this looks just to be in a small zone where the two colors meet indicating that the red was applied first and there is a slight overlap of the blue.

I have not been able to find anything that resembles the red and blue paint scheme nor a reason for it. The assumption that this was once a USN helmet could be incorrect as well and is loosely based on the fact that the navy was notorious for painting there M-1 to suit the whim of the day and also it seems that a very large number of Schlueter helmets were issued to the navy. This assumption could be totally off base however.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what the purpose of the red and blue paint might be?

[MySonsDad]

Nobody is jumping up and telling me I've got some great D-Day invasion relic here worth hundreds of dollars so I think it's safe to say it's just another beat up and painted Navy lid.

THink me and my son will use this as our first attempt (experement) to slowely remove layers of paint, try and see if we can do so without hurting anything.....

[GIZMO8Z]

To the best of my knowledge, I think the red paint could mean that this helmet spent some time as a fire control (firefighting) helmet aboard a navy ship.

As for the red and blue together...? I remember reading somewhere that there were no set helmet painting regulations in the navy, and that specific helmet color and paint design schemes were left up to commanding officers/ captain of the ship. (For example, some ships had OD green painted lids at battle stations, some had battleship gray/blue, some had stencils with battle station ID numbers, some were individual to sailors ratings (for example, radio operator helmets had lightning bolts stenciled on), and some helmets had individual sailor's names painted onto them) So maybe instead of just an all red helmet, the commanding officer decided to do half red and half blue the ships fire fighting helmets?

[MySonsDad]

To the best of my knowledge, I think the red paint could mean that this helmet spent some time as a fire control (firefighting) helmet aboard a navy ship.

As for the red and blue together...? I remember reading somewhere that there were no set helmet painting regulations in the navy, and that specific helmet color and paint design schemes were left up to the commanding officer/ captain of the ship. (For example, some ships had OD green painted lids at battle stations, some had battleship gray/blue, some had stencils with battle station ID numbers, some were individual to sailors ratings (for example, radio operator helmets had lightning bolts stenciled on), and some helmets had individual sailor's names painted onto them) So maybe instead of just an all red helmet, the captain decided to do half red and half blue the ships fire fighting helmets?

Hey Giz...and Merry Christmas to you...

Red is standard Repair Locker coloring, I've got a couple of those, the blue and red combo is something I have never seen nor read about. And yes, you are correct, the navy had no set standard, that's what makes these old navy lids so interesting......we're stating to get a shelf of these things build up.