"the days of finding named untouched front seams was a long time ago" Oh I dont know about that. I got this on ebay last August under $700.00. There are still deals to be found online. But it involves a lot of searching and some luck.  

Do you know when this Ssilor served aboard Iowa?  My dad was aboard, 1952-1954.   As far as the paint goes, Navy helmets were not issued to individuals. They went to Battle Stations, ( referred to as GQ or General Quarters Stations).  We would find one in good shape, make sure it had all the parts and put our names on them, after sizing them.   They generally got repainted every 6 months to a year, ( or so). Got painted with what ever paint was closest to the paint locker door 🤣. They got recycled routinely. They could go from station to station. When ships decommissioned, they were, available to other ships, or went back into the supply system, for reissue to other ships. In 26 years, I saw CS New helmets, once. The rest were just reused, rebuilds from scrapped ships.   In 1973, I was finding fixed bale helmets with the big bulky (Firestone?) liners. 

Anybody know what kind of dog tag this is.came from estate glenside area Pennsylvania. Think it's homemade tag.thanks for looking

In the 1990's when Pope AFB, NC was under command of the 23d Wing (with lineage dating back to the 23d Fighter Group in China), they not only adorned their A-10s and F-16s with with sharkmouth, but also their C-130s!

I am interested in possibly bidding on this, can you send me the eBay auction info. 

hey ya'll, Decided to pull out this uniform a while back and check it with a black light and what do you know I found a name!, it has been positively ID'd to Clarence Franklin Raymond who was part of the 318th and was a gas engineer and part of E Co. 318th Engineers. the guy was originally from michigan, but enlisted in oregon, an interesting thing was he was about 40 when he enlisted having been born in either 1879, or 1875. so he was about 40 ish give or take. haven't found a picture of him in uniform yet, but Stratasfan has generously found a decent amount of info on him. 

Great thread - really like the personal touch with the above correspondence.   Here's another variation on a V-5 sweetheart pin: a modified pin-brooch with the smaller V-5 Program pin attached.

This is a Jungle Operations Branch from "A'" Company Marine Barracks Subic Bay. My dad was stationed there in the late 80s. They would patrol as far as 10 miles outside of the limits of the Naval base into the jungle around the nearby Mt. Santa Rita radio tower. They would go in villages and look for intruders and suspected NPA (New People's Army) Terrorists. They would ride on USAF helicopters supplied by Clark Air Base and fast rope down into the jungle. They were very small 3-4 man patrol teams and worked with the Filipino Navy and Marines. Many low level engagements in "peacetime" that killed and wounded some service-members that has ultimately been forgotten about by our country. I've got tons of pictures of this unit if you're interested in the history of this unit!

Transfers from a HQ unit to a field unit 

This just came up. https://www.ebay.com/itm/364850700706   Interesting set of pictures in an Internet Archive file. https://archive.org/details/001xPFCSpecialist1stClass/005x PFC-Specialist 4th Class.jpg   Unauthorized specialist ranks.