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New WW2 M1 Heatstamp Info (at least to me)


CWG
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It's an excellent article which every M1 helmet collector should read and understand.

 

It doesn't seem like there's been as much discussion around the internet as the article warrants. One forum did have a comment along the lines of "Well, it doesn't line up with the McCord chart in the book, so I'll just stick with the chart.", which strikes me as exactly backwards.

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It's an excellent article which every M1 helmet collector should read and understand.

 

It doesn't seem like there's been as much discussion around the internet as the article warrants. One forum did have a comment along the lines of "Well, it doesn't line up with the McCord chart in the book, so I'll just stick with the chart.", which strikes me as exactly backwards.

It really is a great read for any collector to get a better understanding of the heatstamp. As for the charts we may never know the true 100% story we can only speculate. I do think that the chart is reliable but that we should also keep in mind what this article states. Thanks for your reply Aef1917

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Marc's article was so well researched and well written that it sends us years ahead in what we previously understood. The problem is that the Company of Military Historians, while it has huge coverage of all aspects of militaria worldwide, it has a small amount of readers who would take note of this information. Like I said, Marc knocked this out of the park but, now we have to get people to actually read it. This isn't something that easily fits into our meme oriented society.

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Great article and info...like bugme stated now we just need everyone that collects M1 helmets to get to read it??.....mike

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Very interesting read. this was new to me as well. Thank you for sharing!

 

The point about some lots of blank discs possibly being stored before being turned into helmets is a very good one, and something I, admittedly, had not really considered. I guess this may help explain some of the mixture of parts between different groupings of heat stamps that we see in some of the transitional helmets.

 

I'm wondering if it's possible the existing date chart is based on when these lots were received instead of when they were pressed. That might explain why there's a discrepancy between the existing chart's dates and when the few known lots were manufactured.

 

I find it interesting that the author makes it seem like there's a certain portion of the community that is obsessed with the heat stamps on their helmets. To me it's always just been something that's provided a little bit of extra information on a helmet but was really not of much significance.

 

In light of this new information, are we still sure of the heat stamp range (~27(?) to ~1300) for WWII manufactured McCord M1 helmets? I would think this is more important to a collector who focuses on WWII helmets than the specific manufacture date of a specific lot.

 

In any case, I would say that this would be a good thread to sticky! I think this article is definitely worth reading and understanding for anyone who collects M1s.

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I'm wondering if it's possible the existing date chart is based on when these lots were received instead of when they were pressed. That might explain why there's a discrepancy between the existing chart's dates and when the few known lots were manufactured.

 

 

The existing chart is based on observation of helmet characteristics with (roughly) known date ranges, (i.e. fixed loops, front seam, stainless rim, etc.) rather than any sort of documentation.

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The existing chart is based on observation of helmet characteristics with (roughly) known date ranges, (i.e. fixed loops, front seam, stainless rim, etc.) rather than any sort of documentation.

 

Interesting, I know the article speculated that this was the case but I wasn't sure if this was actually the method used to make the chart.

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Jim McCauley

" Upon arrival at McCord, crates of helmet discs were assigned lot and lift numbers as they were received. This number was intended to travel with the helmet as a permanent record of the steel used in its manufacture." That makes perfect sense.

 

What's still vague is how the helmet discs traveled through the factory to final product.

 

Was it, for the most part, continuous?

 

Was there long or even short term storage of the discs?

 

Great article with great information. It certainly adds to the understanding of lot numbers.

 

Regards.

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What's still vague is how the helmet discs traveled through the factory to final product.

 

Was it, for the most part, continuous?

 

I think that's part of the unknown when it comes to the manufacturing process. I believe the article touches on this briefly by mentioning that this is still not known at the moment whether or not the blanks were staged for production immediately upon arrival or if they may have been stored.

 

I would guess it is likely that it may have been a mix of staging lots directly upon arrival and storing lots once they arrived. Assuming this is true, how often lots were stored and for how long they were stored would probably vary based on the rate of production and the rate at which lots arrived at the factory.

 

That being said, I think it would be safe to assume that if some lots were stored before production they were not stored for a very long time. If lots were stored long term before being used I feel like we should see some helmets with either transitional or late war features with a lower than expected heat stamps.

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Interesting, I know the article speculated that this was the case but I wasn't sure if this was actually the method used to make the chart.

I have spoken with one of the two men who put the chart together. It was indeed based on the observation of a multitude of helmet number stamps and an educated guess based on manufacture dates. The chart is helpful to a point if you can remind yourself that it is not perfect.

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everforward

 

........ I think it would be safe to assume that if some lots were stored before production they were not stored for a very long time. If lots were stored long term before being used I feel like we should see some helmets with either transitional or late war features with a lower than expected heat stamps.

 

Hmm...when reading this I am having a deja vu about a post someone made about a helmet that had very late features but with an early lot number, wondering how this could happen....maybe this is how it could potentially happen.....

 

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Sgt. Stubby

 

Hmm...when reading this I am having a deja vu about a post someone made about a helmet that had very late features but with an early lot number, wondering how this could happen....maybe this is how it could potentially happen.....

 

 

I read Marc Giles excellent article in MILITARY COLLECTOR December last year. It really opened my eyes and backed up some of my suspicions. I cringe each time I read the question “When was my helmet made?” and a prompt answer “Your helmet was made between April 14th and June 2nd 1943.” Yes, the “Helmets of the ETO” chart has become gospel to many young collectors looking for snap answers, but it’s not that easy. Even though the M1 Heat Chart is very useful, it is admitted by the authors to be only a rough interpretation of modern field data.

Somewhere the Wartime records exist. More data is being discovered every year.

In particular I’m interested in “anomolous” heat stamp numbers i.e. rear seam mag-steel rims with early heat #, etc. To suggest a possible explanation I created the following diagram. I hope it helps illustrate how such anomolies could have made it into regularly issued M1 helmets.

*************

Side Note:

Of particular interest to me is the question of

“Did the 1940-41 run of McCord m1917A1 use identical 16.5” steel disks?”

All sorts of leftover M1917A1 parts went into the M1 supply line and so all leftover pre-#25 disks simply were added to the stacks. If they were on the bottom it could have been months into 1942 before they (<#25 M19171A disks) were stamped into M1 helmets.

post-169556-0-40549300-1565291738_thumb.jpg

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In particular I’m interested in “anomolous” heat stamp numbers i.e. rear seam mag-steel rims with early heat #, etc. To suggest a possible explanation I created the following diagram. I hope it helps illustrate how such anomolies could have made it into regularly issued M1 helmets.

 

While it's possible that it was done the way described in your graph, I would think doing it that way would make quality control difficult. I believe that from each lot they pulled a certain number of helmets to do testing and that if they failed the lot would be scrapped. (Though I have to look through my books again to see where exactly I read this) Stacking new blanks on top of old would make it difficult to catch all of the helmets from a certain lot if they failed testing.

 

I would think that it's more likely that the one lot was finished before the next lot was started, but the lots were not necessarily done in order. To your point about efficiency, they could have accomplished this by having two stacks of blanks that workers would pull from with one being the "current" stack they are working through and the other being the "next" stack to work through. This is all conjecture though, so I may be completely off. There's no way to know for sure how they handled the blanks without some sort of documentation.

 

I've also never seen an example of a helmet with a low heat stamp with original late war parts. Does anyone have an example of one?

 

In any case, does anyone happen to know of any original footage that shows how they manufactured the helmets? That may provide a little insight.

 

Does anyone have an "educated guess" on how many WW2 McCord M1 helmets still exist?

 

I think that would be extremely difficult. I'm not sure there's any good way to guesstimate how many were lost or destroyed over the years. There are also many WWII McCord M1s that have been either repurposed, reissued, or reused by other nations, which, while they may still exist, may not really be considered WWII helmets.

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I think what happened was when new stacks came in for production they would stack them up somewhere and the floor man would go over grab a stack not necessarily in any specific order but that was organized in the lot number. For example the man grabs a 566087 and gives it the stamp 456A. Then the next one he grabs is a 566054 and gives it the stamp 456B even though the lift was earlier on the 456B like the article points to and the reason the numbers don’t line up is human error. Again looking at the floor mans prospective He knows he needs to grab a stack from the group of stacks just not in any order. As for the late war parts being on early stamps I’m still very puzzled. Maybe somehow they had veracious extra stacks left over of early stamps that had not been used maybe because of the thought of faulty metal. But when later examined it proved that the metal was indeed fine to use. Now I have always wondered why the very early helmets usually are loaded with stress cracks. Could this be from McCord trying to use the M1917A1 stacks that had been leftover from the production seizing and the metal just did not have the same strength that it did when being made into a M1 shape that it did when being made into a A1. But was still strong enough to hold the helmet together. This is just my thought I’m relatively new to M1 collecting and this is just my thoughts. Thank you all for responding and I personally think this would be a good topic to pin. I wish there was a way to change the title and we could change it to. “In depth article on M1 heatstamps”

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Now I have always wondered why the very early helmets usually are loaded with stress cracks.

The stress cracks are the result of poorer quality manganese steel used in earlier helmets. As the war progressed the formula was improved upon until one was found that could pressed into helmets without cracking over time. This is touched on in the last paragraph on page 261 in the linked article.

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That is what I had originally thought. But also at the same time I wonder if McCord experimented on trying to make the M1 shell out of A1 stacks?

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And that the floor man knows he needs to assign that group ultimately a 456 but it doesn’t matter in which the order of the stacks are produced into M1s.

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The stress cracks are the result of poorer quality manganese steel used in earlier helmets. As the war progressed the formula was improved upon until one was found that could pressed into helmets without cracking over time. This is touched on in the last paragraph on page 261 in the linked article.

Low quality steel was only part of the problem. McCord, in it's own review of the manufacturing process said basically, that due to the complex design of the M-1 compared to the M1917, the process made it difficult to draw(stamp) the new design in a single step. They found that it had to be completed in two attempts as opposed to one draw like the M1917. Roughly 30 percent of the helmet draws exhibited these fractures from the single draw production. Many of these did get distributed and cracked later. They found that annealing(heating) plus adding a second draw helped with the process and eliminated the cracks.

 

This cracking problem was eventually fixed though better steel and the changed manufacturing process.

 

Now, back to the original intent of this thread.

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  • 2 years later...

Thank you very much for sharing this, the article provided a stunning amount of detail I hadn't even thought about. Went ahead and shared it amongst my circle 😊

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