Small Size Army Helmet Used By Navy?
Article about: This is the second one of these I've seen. Both were small sized army shells with small size navy liners. One is early and has early army hardware. This one is early and has early navy hardw
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Interesting item Scott, is there any outline of a navy badge having been on the helmet or do you think the star is the original insignia? If original, maybe the army using navy parts to fulfill army orders?
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Isn't it more natural to see these as army helmets making use of small navy liners? I don't know how early your "early" is, but the earlier they are, the greater the chance they had liners swapped out in field repairs.
If they were meant for the navy at time of manufacture, it would have been more logical to supply the navy liner together with the navy badge to affix the liners, as both were installed at the same time anyway.
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Maybe this is one of the 4,000 Army Type 90 helmets urgently requested by Yamamoto in 1937 for the Navy and later had the liner replaced with a Navy one during field repairs? With the Navy being quite enthusiastic users of helmet covers they may have not seen the need to swap insignias later on.
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Without any traces of Navy grey helmet paint or inner dome unit markings, considering navy use is a stretch.
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The photo above is the Sasebo 2nd SNLF 1st Company 3rd Platoon taken in Port Arthur in late 1937 and is exactly who those army helmets were meant for. Most photos showing the IJN wearing army helmets are of later Sasebo SNLF reinforcements in Shanghai 37, which makes sense as they commited the most troops on the Navy's side and exhausted their supplies the quickest. You can still see the helmets worn in 38 by the Shanghai SNLF in Nanking as well, so they were definitely kept in circulation for some time after. Although it seems there's no solid way to link my theory to any of these surviving examples. At the time 4,000 helmets was no small number—that can outfit over seven standard sized SNLF units, so I think a few surviving is not out of question.
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