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Silver painted liner


gap
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I have a late ww2 liner painted white. Under the white is silver paint. Nothing under the silver paint at all. Why would a liner be painted silver from the get go? 

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I have a late ww2 liner painted white. Under the white is silver paint. Nothing under the silver paint at all. Why would a liner be painted silver from the get go? 

Do you have some pictures?
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Burning Hazard

Silver painted liners were used all over. I've read about them being used at parades, ranges, and for training. I also seen a handful of helmets + liners painted silver and gold that came out of a student theater; they were used as stage props.

 

Pat

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I have two silver liners - both USAAF training. One with gunnery school decal and the other just numbered with wing and prop stencils.

 

Dave

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No. Mine has the horny toad decal like the one in Life magazine back during the war. I’ll get pics at some point. 

That looks a little like a 70s rock album!

Dave

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Cap Camouflage Pattern I

Very cool liners, as to why gap's liner has no factory OD under the silver paint, two possibilities spring to mind. I have seen a good number of liners with no paint at all in photos of US soldiers in the 1950s and ARVN in the 1960s, presumably some batches of liners had substandard paint adhesion. The other possibility is if the liner was used for a ceremonial purpose, if the liner had already seen some use and suffered damage to the original paint then removing it before painting it silver would give it a cleaner appearance.

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Most WWII-era silver painted liners I've encountered were from AAF gunnery schools. I read somewhere (but can't remember where) that these silver liner were painted when gunners graduated from basic training and were able to move up to turret training.

 

The liner below was issued with the factory OD, then painted bright yellow, and later painted silver.

 

IMG_3308.JPG.fb1b8f84d2aa17674912dfe77cc48b78.JPG

 

IMG_3309.JPG.a1c0b7f094e7fcf70b227145d5aeab8c.JPG

 

IMG_0534-1.JPG.09209866514d37211de713ae95e79c77.JPG

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That's a cool one. The flexible gunnery course was only about 3 weeks IIRC so I'm not sure if it that accelerated timeline would allow for or involve that kind of helmet liner modification. If it did, and they belonged to each student, they would not likely enter the theater painted like that. If so, wouldn't there would be many more of them in circulation considering the hundreds of thousands of graduates? I always assumed they stayed at the various training bases and were just checked out by the students.

Interesting discussion.

Ideas?

Dave

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