M18 Stalhelm

J.LeBrasseur

J.LeBrasseur

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Staff member
I am hopeing I may have finally completed a quest for a M18 helmet! Have plenty of M16 and M17's but have had trouble finding a good M18.

Well I think I may have finally scored, has all the correct characteristics!

Maker and sized marked ET66, leather pads with horse hair. Metal liner band with D loop for chinstraps. The loops are rivited to the liner band and not the helmet.

There is another stamping in the inside top of the helmet BD491?? if anybody has any idea what this marking is, I would apprecaite it.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

thanks

James



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Hey James,
This looks like one of the reproductions that have recently come out of Lichtenstein, but do not feel bad as I will take it off your hands for you, as I would hate to see you get burned, but I also would like that reproduction cloth cover in the back ground, so I can cover it up.
This looks like one that has not been messed with, nice score.
Gus
 
Excellent James! You know if Gus wants it ....it has got to be good. Congrats, Brian
 
Not a big note, Both the M17's i redid came from Bulgaria.I am not saying your's is bulgarian , but that the same style muber's were in the Crown's.
Mark
 
Very nice helmets.
The BD is the steel mill code, and the 491 is the smelting lot #. Each ingot from every smelting lot had to be numbered so that data on the exact quality of the steel from that particular lot could be accessed by the drawing mill (helmet maker) in case one batch of helmets failed in the ballistics tests or the steel was otherwise inferior. The steel mill code and lot # were stamped on the blank sheet steel cut-out prior to the drawing (pressing) process, as was the drawing mill code and size # (i.e. E.T. 64). In case the steel was not up to specs, the steel mill would be responsible for any costs, and not the helmet maker.

This is my first contribution to this forum. I finally got around to adding pictures successfully.

WW1 German steel helmets are my main field of collecting, and I know how difficult it is to find complete M18 helmets. I've managed to snag 3 over the years, but only one is complete with both halves of the chinstrap. Both of my other ones have broken/partial chinstraps.



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Interior. I'm not sure what the scribbles on the liner are supposed to be, but they're blue ink and look like they were there before the leather was cut.



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The dome stamp. R stands for the "Roechling" steel mill. I've noticed that later helmets, especially M18s, have more letters than earlier helmets. The smelting lot # on this one is followed by an "N".





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Chinstrap detail
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The one interesting thing about this helmet is that the maker/size code is stamped (upside down) on the outside of the helmet instead of the interior R.H. flange. I can only make out the "62", and not a maker code.


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James,

I hope this information was useful. It's well documented in Ludwig Baer's excellent history of the German Helmet book, and even more detailed in his later 3 (?) volume set that came out (in German only so far) in the 90's.

It might just be the angle, but in the picture showing your collection, is the 4th helmet from the left a square dip prototype or are my eyes playing tricks on me again?

Hans
 
Hans- welcome to the the forum, you are most welcome here!

Your information and pictures are most helpful.

You asked about the 4th helmet, I believe this is the one?

the rise from the bottom to the to the visor is quite a bitter higher then ther rest, not sure if this is what you mean?

It is a M17 and has a stamp of 64 and also stamped into the steel is ET64.

I will try and get better pictures if needed, I jsut did these quickly...

I have Baer's first book, mainly focuses on Third Reich, if his new books have more on Imperial I will look into them..

James





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James,
Thank you for the warm welcome.

The English language edition Ludwig Baer book has accounts of helmet production, both WW1 and WW2, at the very end of the book. When his new books came out in the mid 90's, I was happy to see that he had expanded the Imperial helmet section (in Volume I) due to new archival information he suddenly had access to after the fall of the German Democratic Repulic.

The WW1 chapter contains information from wartime documents on helmet covers, and I see you have one of those :thumb up:. Is it maker marked?

My mistake about the square dip. The more I looked at the picture of your collection, the more I thought (and hoped) the 4th helmet was a prototype M16. The angle of the helmet threw me, and after seeing the new pictures I realize I was wrong. The helmet is a beauty regardless.



The helmets pictured are both E.T. 62 M16s. The one on the left is a square dip protoype, and the right one is a regular model 1916.
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Here's one more shot showing that the difference between the models is not only the angle of the dip from the visor to the neck guard which was a serious design flaw leading to stress cracks (mine has no cracks), but also the narrowness of where the square dip helmet's visor rim area meets the lower dome (square dip is on the left), which according to the designer, Prof. Schwerd, was very difficult to achieve in the drawing process. According to him, these factors led to a large amount of scrapped helmets and made it impossible to produce these helmets in large quantities. The design was "altered immediately".

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30 000 helmets were ordered from Eisenhuettewerke Thale (E.T.). These were made sometime between mid December 1915-January 1916 and distributed to Assault Troops and Pioniere (earmarked for the lead assaults on Verdun) by the end of January 1916 for field trials. There are unfortunately no records that I know of that state exactly when the design was altered in practice (at the ironworks), so its hard to say how many of these first helmets issued were prototype models. It's possible that all of them were. The official change to the blueprint design was made in early April before the first widescale production of helmets started a month or two later.
 
I hope you don't mind me hogging your thread James, but I find this stuff interesting and love discussing it. I read everything I can find about WW1 history - I especially like period German books - and like to research as many of the aspects of my collection as I can.


Anyway, here's a frontal shot of both helmets with the prototype on the left. Note the characteristic E.T. similarities, for example the angle of the visor and overall shape, as well as the differences.

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Interior:

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hope you don't mind me hogging your thread James, but I find this stuff interesting and love discussing it. I read everything I can find about WW1 history - I especially like period German books - and like to research as many of the aspects of my collection as I can.
Click to expand...

Frankly I have enjoyed reading it :D -- thanks!
 
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