Israeli m76/85 Orlite Helmet

**Politefaun** · 09-19-2022, 01:55 AM

Recently I was able to cross this and another helmet off the want list. I don't know a lot about these except for that they were one of the first early composite helmets adopted by a major military. It looks like the manufacture date is December of 1985 which if correct would make this an "early" m76/85 since it has the updated suspension. Happy to find one of these in a nice salty condition with the foam largely intact. Now I just need to get lucky and find an Israeli used British paratrooper helmet, thank you for reading!

**Composite** · 10-01-2022, 07:41 AM

When I started collecting many years ago the Orlite was one of the hardest to get....and then Ireland started to use them and they were all over the ground at one War & Peace Show (UK). I'm not sure if I've ever seen a list of how many countries ended up with them.....

**Politefaun** · 10-03-2022, 03:34 AM

by Composite

When I started collecting many years ago the Orlite was one of the hardest to get....and then Ireland started to use them and they were all over the ground at one War & Peace Show (UK). I'm not sure if I've ever seen a list of how many countries ended up with them.....

The helmet covers the Irish army use for their orlites are pretty neat. I think a few South American and European countries use them, but I can't keep up with all the variants of these. I remember the Israeli M1s with nets used to be pretty easy to get 5 years ago now I cant really find any around, guess they aren't many steel helmets left.

**MAP** · 10-03-2022, 05:22 AM

Great pick up.

The photos are nice but it looks 10x better in hand

**Composite** · 10-03-2022, 07:20 AM

Peruvian one

**Tinhat** · 10-03-2022, 05:11 PM

The M76/85 designation I think is a collectors need to put things is buckets, the earlier pattern is referred to as the OR-201 and the this model as the OR-202. OR being Orlite, so I’m not sure what happened when the Rabintex took over manufacture. At one point I was tracking the part number (401-40-019-9 on your helmet) to see if I could make some sense out of it but only came to a vague correlation.

The 201s were also refitted with the new chinstrap arrangement, which was the most visible change, I believe the composite was improved. I read on Wikipedia that the neoprene disc was added in the crown, but I’m sure my 1980 dated helmet has one (I’ll check), post 145 of this link.

IDF ISRAELI helmets arab israeli wars, 1967 - 1982

Here’s a list form Wikipedia of countries the helmet is used in. The later export models were of lesser quality, the chinstrap and liner material is cheaper and the neoprene pad is replaced with closed cell foam strip. All export models are labelled in English.

OR-201 - Wikipedia