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M-1 Helmets Matched Pair McCord Fixed Bales 24B Heat Stamps Prewar Production


TCSchultz
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A picker who I deal with turned up a pile of military from a local sale that included a pair of fixed bail M-1 Helmets that turned out to be both the same production run.  Both are fixed bail front seam short length khaki OD # 3 chinstraps with brass buckles that are both heatstamped "24B" which dates them to the earliest production run by McCord in June of 1941 Prewar.  Both shells  came with Westinghouse High Pressure Liners with Khaki suspensions which would have replaced their original Hawley Liners that these would have come with I believe.  The two helmets are mirrors of each other in appearance, construction, paint and hardware with neither showing much use.  I can only assume that they were issued together to two men who may have been in the same National Guard Unit prewar and stayed in the same family all these years.  Perhaps they were brothers or other relations who ended up in the same local unit.  Needless to say I'm thrilled to find two near mint pre war examples of these M-1 Helmets.  

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Great looking helmets. Thank you for sharing. In your last picture of the heat stamp, it has what looks to possibly be a lightly stamped “3” between the “4” and the “B”. 

 

Could just be my eyes, but I have similar lightly stamped numbers on some of my helmets. 
 

Chris
 

 

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Thanks for all of the kind comments and I see where there could have been a third digit after the first two numbers before the letter. I looked at both helmets with a bright light but can see no trace of a stamped number so it's either that they missed stamping in that third digit or they had a space there as they planned on using three digits as they did later.  All of the features match up with very early production so it's either what it is being 24 B or it's 24XB but at least they are both identical spacing and stamping style.  Thanks again.

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Most likely 24XB

 

Those bails are the 2nd style of mccord bails that were introduced some time before the 200 lot number.

Still a very nice pair of helmets!

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8 minutes ago, Nickman983 said:

Most likely 24XB

 

Those bails are the 2nd style of mccord bails that were introduced some time before the 200 lot number.

Still a very nice pair of helmets!

I agree with Nick, these helmets unfortunately lack the characteristics of the 1941-produced McCords, those being: the early style loops, the cast brass chinstrap hardware, and lastly the XXY X heat stamp format. Nice helmets nonetheless, but they date to August 1942.

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Thanks and that's fine, apparently the third digit in the heatstamp # just didn't make it onto the helmets which explains the gap between the first two digits and the letter.  Still happy with them and perhaps then the liners are correct as the ones that these came with after all. 

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Very nice McCords and in excellent condition. 

 

It have one with I believe heatstamp 24 A and it has the later style fixed loops too. I  always wondered about that. Either the heatstamp wasn't complete or they were later produced.

 

Here are some pics.

 

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The letter A is very faint.

 

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Rene

 

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Wow that's cool and thanks for sharing that, apparently this heatstamp range exists with more this one variation.  I bet that they had a numeral that just didn't stamp and left the blank spot between the 4 and the letter.  Neat to see another helmet that is so close in production to mine and the weird part is that I found these two together as issued. 

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