M16 WW1 Q66 RETRO 1930’S HARLEY RACER HELMET

[Show slideshow]

12►

BACKGROUND: The first "modern" steel helmets were introduced by the French army in early 1915 and were shortly followed by the British army later that year. With plans on the drawing board, experimental helmets in the field, ("Gaede" helmet), and some captured French and British helmets the German army began tests for their own steel helmet at the Kummersdorf Proving Grounds in November, and in the field in December 1915. An acceptable pattern was developed and approved and production began at Eisen-und Hüttenwerke, AG Thale/Harz, in the spring of 1916. These first modern M16 helmets evolved into the M18 helmets by the end of WWI. The M16 and M18 helmets remained in usage through-out the Weimar Reichswehr era and on into the early years of the Third Reich until the development of the smaller, lighter M35 style helmet in June 1935.

DESCRIPTION: This is one of those helmets that is trying to scream out it's story to us and so as a helmet collector I will do my best to provide the most accurate narrative I can come up with. This helmet came out of Bowling Green, Kentucky from a church charity organization and was donated by one it's members is all that I was told. Interesting synergy with it's possible racing history as I believe that Corvette still makes cars there. This is how the helmet came to me as a rock solid large sized Q66 (F.W. Quist factory in Esslingen, Germany) with no dents, rust or cracks of any kind and in stone cold mint condition with the exception of a small drill hole at the back (possibly used for hanging).

At first I thought that this was a bad retro 1960's-70's gold leaf paint job and that the helmet was clearly "bikerized" which makes this lid cool enough as "Retro Americana" however upon closer inspection I noticed a number of distinct features which led me on an entirely different path. When I first held this helmet up to the light I could clearly see that beneath the gold paint that there was some underlying WW1 vet graffiti on the front brow and rear back skirt of the helmet something that reads "Fresno, Washington, Chicago,....Fest.." and on the back skirt there are 3 lines of text which I just can't make out also beneath the gold overpaint. However vet art on WW1 helmets mostly describes French towns, battles and areas liberated during the Great War and not US cities unless it's a mail home helmet. So what is actually written beneath the gold paint is still a mystery to me. On the top dome however we find a very interesting engraving as if carved by a pocket knife the inscription "Klippel and Sorensen 31-32-33" with a shooters bullseye of a circle with a cross inside to represent the word "and" which may shed some light that these men had a military background possibly as WW1 vets themselves. My best guess is that both of these men's were in some type of motorcycle racing club or contests spanning the three year period of 1931, 1932 and 1933 where they were both on a team together or both winners of some said event. If you do an internet search on Klippel + Sorensen you will discover that both names appear in a motor cross event about 15 years ago on a long list of competitors. The fact that both of these men's names appear at the same event or at least both doing the same type of event all these years later suggests that this helmet may have belonged to one of their great grandfathers but further research is of course required. So in my opinion since the gold paint is clearly marked 1931, 32, 33 this paint must have been added on or just after 1933 making this is a very early racing helmet from a repurposed WW1 German vet art helmet. The 3 split pins do match the outside gold paint and the liner is some type of transitional liner of an unknown origin. I added the chinstrap myself a high end Czech sourced reproduction installed to complete the piece.

All in all a very nicely preserved helmet that literally 100+ years old and without an dents, cracks or rust pitting whatsoever. A real survivor of a specimen!

$350 SOLD

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 1916 to 1918 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.)