DESCRIPTION
This helmet represents one of those tougher to to find genuine WW2 painted helmets in nighttime black camouflage. The rear stampings of CKL64 indicate that this particular helmet was manufactured by the Eisenhuttenwerke factory in Thale, Germany with rear lot number is 2577 placing the production date to early 1942. Please add $25 for the addition of a period accurate reproduction chinstrap. The inside liner is made from pigskin and is ink stamped "56" in India ink on one of the tongues.
There is a lot of armchair speculation over black camouflage painted helmets and only over the past 20 years or so has the collecting community come to realize that these really did exist during the war and was required for a variety of duty obligations. These include but are not limited to the following: Wehrmacht Flak units (Anti Aircraft Artillery) which operated mainly at night, Panzer units wanting to match their equipment and helmets to their black wool wraps (multiple reference books showing evidence of black painted gas canisters and even belt buckles), Guard duties at train stations, factories, coastal batteries and military infrastructures.
In this particular case the helmet appears to have been field sprayed in black with an ET/Ckl textbook Heer eagle being somewhat crudely masked off to keep it in tact as to identify the soldier's particular branch of service. As someone who professionally restores helmets as part of my living I can say that I have personally stripped down well over 1000 post war Czech painted black helmets and none of them has ever had a Wehrmacht eagle still in tact and fully exposed like this one does. I have a found a few stray eagles underneath the overpaint however only perhaps 3 or 4 instances. The rest of the time the Czech government would completely strip down the German helmets they captured via a harsh chemical dipping method or assembly line sand blasting. The helmets were then all painted jet black and a new liner was added often made up of reassembled German parts. In my opinion there is zero chance that the Czech government in it's post war period from in the late 1940's to early 1950's would have ever masked off the original Heer eagle decal and then issued this out to it's respective Czech fire brigade or civilian police services. This helmet is the real McCoy and repainted sometime between 1942-45 as that is the most historically logical explanation in my view.
If you visit the educational website: germanhelmetvault.com you will see a variety of original wartime examples of black camo painted helmets very similar to mine for better reference.
$850 SOLD
Shipping to Anywhere USA/Canada: $22 with full tracking numbers.
Shipping to Europe: $65 with full tracking numbers.
Shipping to Australia/New Zealand:$75 with full tracking numbers.
HELMETS OF WAR INC.
PO Box 555
Champlain, NY 12919-0555
Please call, text or email me if interested.
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
