DESCRIPTION
This helmet came out of a estate of an advanced collector whose family inherited it along with several other German paratrooper helmets all similar to this one. As the former paint job was absolutely horrible I went ahead and completely stripped down the shell and repainted it as per WW2 Normandy specifications. In my opinion this shell was produced back in the 1980-90's in Western Europe when they were still making highly accurate paratrooper shells. Some suggest this was achieved using original factory presses and machinery but I highly doubt that. The helmet has a near perfect overall shape and curvature to the top dome along with the correct subtle upward rise along the front rim edge. The cheap knockoffs can never quite get the shape right as the bottom rim tends to slope upwards too abruptly and at too steep of an angle. The original paratrooper helmets are almost flat bottomed when you lay them on a hard surface and really have that bowl shaped appearance to them.
In this case I wanted to do something a little more unique and copy a helmet I had once seen at the British National Museum of History. It was a Deutch Afrika Korps para trooper helmet with a shooting comet hand painted logo on the wearer's left hand side. It has been noted from original black and white photographs that this symbol was used by the 4. Fallschirmjäger-Division (Paratrooper) whose first combat mission was against the Allied landings at Anzio (Operation Shingle) in January 1944.
Veteran accounts claim to have seen this shooting comet logo on many helmets from this division fighting in Italy and Tunisia and painted in different colors to denote various kompanies within the Korps.
In this case I went with a RAL8000 DAK paint job followed by a hand rendered shooting star logo in an off white enamel paint. The entire helmet was then well aged, generally beat up and then darkened in the scorching hot sun over the course of a rather lengthy heatwave we had here recently. The overall result is a beautiful museum quality example of a rare shooting comet paratrooper helmet that has lots of battle-worn patina.
The shell is stamped ET71 with a rear lot number of 1235 which coincides with Brian Ice's lot data book as a real paratrooper lot number and so most of the boxes are checked here historically speaking.
Definitely nice to have a large size ET71 like this as it will fit most modern men's heads of today and can be used for display or even historical re-enacting. I do have a chinstrap set I can toss in for free but the buyer will have to add that themselves by way of a simple hand held ratchet using a size 14mm socket to snuggly fit around the 4 internal spanner washers.
$350 + shipping.
Shipping to Anywhere USA/Canada: $20 with full tracking numbers.
Shipping to Europe/UK: $65 with full tracking numbers.
Shipping to Australia/New Zealand: $85 with full tracking numbers.
(Please contact us with any special shipping instructions as I am here to serve and facilitate the shipment.)
Please call, text or email me if interested.
Tel/Text: 1-438-502-5052
Email Us: helmetsofwar@gmail.com
HELMETS OF WAR INC.
PO Box 555
Champlain, NY 12919-0555
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
