Serbian M59/65

**Gunny Hartmann** · 08-18-2017, 04:54 PM

Serbian issue M59/85 found on fleabay at a bargain price, in new condition apart from storage scratches and complete with instruction leaflet on how to adjust the liner. An interesting lid from the senseless slaughter that was the Balkans war!...

Edit, after looking at the photograph of the Serbian decal it looks like the original Yugoslavian red star is under the decal!..

**James C** · 08-18-2017, 09:47 PM

Nice example Paul

and displaying a Land forces decal over the painted red star ,I have an example identical to yours too ,I took some pics of my other thought provoking example yesterday as it happens so might as well share it here if ok with you

**Gunny Hartmann** · 08-18-2017, 10:12 PM

Some nice ventilation on your lid James, i watched this video and they are not very bullet resistant at all!...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF7SOSvlT3g

**James C** · 08-19-2017, 08:51 AM

Great vid Paul ,never seen this before..same infantry helmets as yours too ,i like the way he's popping away while his dog roams around in view

the bulg m47 looks like an AK on steroids

**Greg Pickersgill** · 08-23-2017, 11:18 AM

It's worth mentioning that there are *three* variants of this helmet, one of which I didn't know about until yesterday. There is the basic M59, then the revised M59/85, which has a slightly differently cut shell (hard to see without side by side comparison and a certain amount of measuring) and a new easy to remove liner fixing system, and then the 'new' one which is genuinely uncommon verging on rare, and which does not have an established designation, though M59/97 might do as a temporary code.

What seems to have happened in the mid-1990s is that the production of the new M97 Mile Dragic composite was slow, so a few hundred M59/85 shells were fitted with the liner and chinstrap of the M97 as a stopgap. The shells seem to have been used as is, including the now redundant chinstrap bails, but with new fitments welded in for the new chinstrap. We can infer that production of the M87 must have ramped up faster than expected because this hybrid was abandoned after only a few hundred had been produced.

One question immediately comes up though, which is that the composite M89 already existed at this time (it is virtually a M59 made in plastic/fibreglass/whatever instead of steel, and by stretching a point could be the *fourth* variant!) so why the requirement for a hybrid, and indeed why not fit the M87 lining into the M89. We may never know.

There's actually quite a bit of into on this third variant and I can't understand how I have overlooked it all this time. Go to

Casco yugoslavo Ne 44-85 nuevo barboquejo (NB despite what Joseba says, 'NE44' is wrong as a designation, and it was also never intended as a paratroop helmet.)

.: World War Helmets - Casque Modèle 59/85 expérimental :.

I'm guessing that the few hundred of these were dumped as surplus scarp along with all the other M59-types that have come on sale in the last couple of years - a very good reason to look twice at what seems now, but was not always and may not be in the future, a 'common' helmet.

**Greg Pickersgill** · 08-24-2017, 07:49 PM

I think I have worked out why the M89 composite was not the interim measure between the M59/85 and the M97. Although obviously some were in the hands of the Yugoslav Army and then the Serbs thereafter, they seem to have been primarily produced by the TRZ Hadziki factory in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which of course rapidly became either inaccessible to the Serbs or actually on-functional due to the ongoing conflict. Well, its as good an informed guess as any! I'll be happy to be told something better or truer.