This is one of my latest creations and for which I took a lot of inspiration from some vivid original color photos of 1944 German positions along the Normandy coast line. I then took myself back to 1944 in the autumn before D-Day and decided that this Luftwaffe anti-flak soldier found himself wanting to try and blend in with some of the French oak trees surrounding his field post and so applied some burgundy red to his helmet which is a color most often seen in Luftwaffe helmets and was inspired from some of the original Normandy camos on my site which used a burgundy type of brown red. Of all of the original Normandy camo helmets I’ve held in hand I must say that beyond your standard yellow tans, dark greens and reddish browns the 4th and 5th most common paint colors encountered are burgundy red, kacki greens and deep yellows all of which are historically accurate. Let us always remember that that Luftwaffe units had the most amount of downtime as they are rarely exposed to front line combat compared to the Wehrmacht and was more stationary and so had access to a greater variety of local paints.
The inside liner is 100% original to the helmet and was used by the LW solider himself as the lot numbers bare out. I intentionally made the paint spray a little sloppy in places to create nicely crude drip effects and aged the paint down to a full year of combat from 1944-45. Overall I think it’s really looks the part and would be a $3,000 helmet all day long if the paint was 100% original.
$550 SOLD
Please call, text or email me if interested as I can recreate the same pattern for a different original German helmet shell.
Tel/Text: 1-438-502-5052
Email Us: helmetsofwar@gmail.com
GERMAN HELMET FACTORY PRODUCTION CODES(Every original German helmet produced from 1935 to 45 had two factory stampings punched into the side and rear or both in the rear. The alpha numeric number refers to the factory location and the inside metric circumference in centimeters. The rear lot number refers to the production run and was used as a quality control measure. The font styles used at each factory were slightly different but highly consistent throughout the war and so fakes or reproductions will either not have these numbers at all or they will use the wrong font style or letter spacing and so are easily identified as post war made.)
(FS or EF)-Emaillierwerke AG, Fulda, Germany
(ET or ckl)-Eisenhuttenwerke, Thale, Germany
(Q)-Quist, Esslingen, Germany
(NS)-Vereinigte Deutsche Nikelwerke, Schwerte, Germany
(SE or hkp)-Sachsische Emaillier u. Stanzwerke, Lauter, Germany
