Heavily Damaged late War WWII M1 helmet set

[trenchfoot]

I know I'm a bit late on the discussion, but it looks like someone smashed a rifle butt on the top of the helmet from the back left side. The deep line indent has a small curve then the line keeps on going. Rifle butts have a curve that separates the butt from the barrel and that could be the indentation. It looks like the rife when it hit the helmet, broke, causing the other dents around it.

[Cap Camouflage Pattern I]

Is it just me or is there the letter "M" on the front of the helmet?

[trenchfoot]

The "m" looks like it is just gold paint that probably dripped on the helmet after the war, but on the other hand, it looks worn and is aged like the helmet is

[Pepper]

Came across this picture and thought of this post. Picture caption describes a soldier in New Guinea who had (the box pictured below his rifle) air dropped onto his helmet

[WWII_GI]

Wow that's an interesting photo! Thank you for sharing, that's a likely possibility about what could have happened to the helmet!

 

-Steven

[MartyMcPouch]

The pic is indeed really interesting. But I doubt the guy was dropped on the helmet. His head would look like an exploded melon. I don`t know what kind of energy is needed to cause this trouble?

 

The helmet shown in the first posts looks to me like a late war helmet set used till the 50ies when somebody decided to drive a car over it. Probably it saved his grandpa`s life because he could reach the cashier of the drive in on Okinawa better and enjoy a desperately needed coke.

 

Every time I see this swivel bails and glossy repaints any story seems to me like a fairy tale. In Europe there are no such nice pots like in the US. So you have piles of repainted swivel bail pots`n late war liners hanging out on ebay and super hot stories told by sellers.

[Seagle07]

Hello, sorry I am late.

 

Whats the heat stamp of the M1? I’m curious, because if we have the same heat stamp or numbers roughly close, maybe mine could also have served in the Pacific?

[Cap Camouflage Pattern I]

4 hours ago, Seagle07 said:

Hello, sorry I am late.

 

Whats the heat stamp of the M1? I’m curious, because if we have the same heat stamp or numbers roughly close, maybe mine could also have served in the Pacific?

No no no no no

[dmar836]

Yeah, I'm out. Silly story. Many have been damaged or crushed and they didn't preserve wounded or killed soldiers helmets for them.

Speculation is growing to point of recreating known info.

Where are all the German helmets brought home buy the GIs who crushed them in?

[BryanJ]

Assuming someone was wearing the helmet when it received the damage and survived, they would immediately be looking for a replacement, which would not be hard to do on Okinawa.  However, who is going to lug around their damaged helmet as a souvenir for the remainder of their time while engaged in combat on the island, or recovering in an aid station.  And then the grandson didn’t want to divulge their grandfather’s name, survivor of this remarkable tale?  All very doubtful.

[CavalryCombatant]

Hello!  If I understood correctly the original poster mentioned it was being put up for sale, so it may be a bit hard to figure that out after so long.  Additionally (to my knowledge anyway) heat stamps did not determine where helmets were shipped out to, it was just sort of a “you go here you go there,” Type of thing.  There’s a chance your helmet was sent to the PTO, there’s a chance it went to Europe, there’s a chance it stayed stateside the entire war.   Honestly, without a name or solid provenance it’s nearly impossible to say where it was.

[CavalryCombatant]

Shoot, it didn’t quote.  My bad

On 12/25/2020 at 9:47 AM, Seagle07 said:

Hello, sorry I am late.

 

Whats the heat stamp of the M1? I’m curious, because if we have the same heat stamp or numbers roughly close, maybe mine could also have served in the Pacific?

 

[P-59A]

I was scratching my head trying to figure out what hit this. The inside shot shows it was rectangular in shape. Maybe a 3"x4" object or 2"x3".

[P-59A]

One more observation. What ever hit this helmet came down at an  angle. The top shows a "roll" over the top of impact and a "slide" into impact. The front view confirms this angle of strike. The patina to the rust indicates it was done some time ago. This is not a straight down strike. It was not run over. It was hit from above by a solid object  traveling at an angle at a high rate of speed. This is not a "crushing", the damage is localized to and around the point of impact. In my opinion. What would cause this kind of damage is the next question to be asked.

[P-59A]

Food for thought, maybe the seller sold this without telling the family. It's a thought.

[conn]

the helmet looks to me it could have been used under the car frame as a jack stand or something similar

 

 

one night coming home from work, i used a ammo can that i kept wrenches in as safety block while changing a front tire, sure enough the jack gave way, the can held up good except for a crease mark on one side. that was a 73 ford pick up with 2k lbs in the back

[P-59A]

On 12/26/2020 at 4:44 PM, BryanJ said:

Assuming someone was wearing the helmet when it received the damage and survived, they would immediately be looking for a replacement, which would not be hard to do on Okinawa.  However, who is going to lug around their damaged helmet as a souvenir for the remainder of their time while engaged in combat on the island, or recovering in an aid station.  And then the grandson didn’t want to divulge their grandfather’s name, survivor of this remarkable tale?  All very doubtful.

On the other hand, if something almost took your head off and this deflected the object enough to save your life you might want to keep it as proof of a time when...

[P-59A]

1 minute ago, conn said:

the helmet looks to me it could have been used under the car frame as a jack stand or something similar

 

 

one night coming home from work, i used a ammo can that i kept wrenches in as safety block while changing a front tire, sure enough the jack gave way, the can held up good except for a crease mark on one side. that was a 73 ford pick up with 2k lbs in the back

This is not crushed. Look harder. A crush as you described from above would have would have flaired everything out and flattened it in an even displayed force. That is not what happened as seen in the impact.

[dmar836]

I disagree in a big way. I fabricate a lot of things and when tucking metal for changing the area value, etc. metal doesn't always look like you think it would. Metal has to go somewhere when forced. You can cut it, bend it, shrink it, and stretch it. That's about it without heat. To me this looks obvious - like a large, not-sharp object of considerable weight pushed down on it and then stopped. A small, single point of impact just wouldn't look like that at all IMO.

"Okay, so what if...."  It's a humorous discussion,really.

[john k]

I recall being a kid obsessed with militaria in the 1980's.  I remember taking a large rock or maybe even a sledge hammer to a VN era M1 shell or three "to see what it could take".  My dad and I might just have taken a M1 to the range for "ballistics testing"?  

 

Just saying, with all things militaria we need to consider "the battle of the back yard", every bit as much (if not more so) seriously as the "battle of the bulge".  

 

This could be a wartime relic (post ww2), or just a surplus M1 that got destroyed for the heck of it.  We have no way of knowing either way.  

 

On the other hand, not too long ago I handled a Fixed bail shell with shrapnel damage and provenance from the ETO. Asking price $2500.  I had no way of knowing for sure either way.  I did not drop that cash.  
 

[BryanJ]

Heck, while we’re all speculating, I’ll continue to play along.  If you look at the photo looking top-down, it appears that it was a direct top-down impact because the damage looks almost circular.  But, the side facing photo shows that the impact actually hit from above, at an angle, in my 100% unscientific opinion.  I believe the damage could most definitely have been some sort of large shrapnel, and it is possible that grand dad was wearing it and survived.  Where the story loses it’s credibility to me, is that it would be hard (not impossible) to hang on to it during the campaign and get it home.  And I don’t understand the reluctance to ID grand dad.  There was tons of scrap material brought back after the war, and it could very well have made it back that way.  However, if the grandson was a credible guy, I guess I’d say, wow, grand dad was a lucky guy, then I’d wonder why he wanted to get rid of it, because if grand dad wasn’t wearing that helmet, grandson wouldn’t be here either.  Thus, I’d never get rid of it, in fact, I’d pat it every time I walked by.

[P-59A]

1 hour ago, dmar836 said:

I disagree in a big way. I fabricate a lot of things and when tucking metal for changing the area value, etc. metal doesn't always look like you think it would. Metal has to go somewhere when forced. You can cut it, bend it, shrink it, and stretch it. That's about it without heat. To me this looks obvious - like a large, not-sharp object of considerable weight pushed down on it and then stopped. A small, single point of impact just wouldn't look like that at all IMO.

"Okay, so what if...."  It's a humorous discussion,really.

I'm not saying this is real or not. I work commercial construction and have had to mickey mouse fabricated steel. "To me this looks obvious - like a large, not-sharp object of considerable weight pushed down on it and then stopped." what you describe is exactly what an impact is".  "A small, single point of impact just wouldn't look like that at all IMO." This is exactly what the helmet shows. How it  got there I do not know.

[CavalryCombatant]

To me, it almost looks like it was hit with a piece of farm equipment?  I’m probably wrong, but something about the part coming off to the side reminds me a plow.  
 

perhaps the grandkids were playing war in the field after the war and dropped it, perhaps it was hit and recovered a few days after being dropped?

 

Just my 2¢

[dmar836]

P-59A I thought you stated it was a small, square shaped impact. Misunderstood. No offense intended to anyone here as we're all just in the world of make believe.

This is becoming more common in the past couple of years with M-1s. What used to be discounted as likely playground or wheel chock-type damage is now forgotten(nobody has does that to WWII lids in a good generation or two). We've now replaced such logical assumptions (since we all did it) with artillery/bullet damage that is now considered just as common and likely as WWII tent stake damage was but where are those? Again, where are the souvenir bashed in helmets of the then-hated enemy?  Some of these imaginations are going for big $$ yet there is no more provenance or evidence now than 30 yrs ago. Just a lot more imagination and hope.

 

[dmar836]

Sorry for all the grammatical errors - can't edit.