US Helmets and Covers from WW2 to Present Day | Collector's & History Corner

you this is a collection of covers on the American helmets both starting with the steel cot and later on moving to the Kevlar PSA GT and the mich take in 1941 or so the United States started develop the famous steel pot the m1 helmet which became the iconic American helmet in World War 2 Korea and in Vietnam as issued originally was kind of smooth and that was the problem at Guadalcanal when the Marines when the person wants to use it in combat when it got wet moonlight tended to reflect off of it it tended to give away your position so that was not a good thing or your helmet so they started thinking about coverage for helmets one of the first covers was this mosquito net cover and I have it tucked inside but there's little strings and things and you can let it hang down a little bit and tie it under your neck and stuff like that it didn't prove popular but yet it is safe in the systems I'll show you as late as Vietnam where in theory it was issued but I can't get any pictures of anybody actually wearing it okay but it's very thin mosquito netting and sometimes they took these off of parachutes and cut them up and did a similar thing all right the Marine Corps after Guadalcanal and the shiny helmets in the rain went to a reversible cover which became the iconic symbol of the US Marines in World War two and Korea and for those of you who are fans of early TV sergeant Saunders on combat all right so was Green side or it was tan side it was reversible and this is what Marines war in the Pacific after Guadalcanal while canal plain ordinary shiny helmet all right the arty also continued with shiny helmets in the Pacific but in North Africa they started to think they needed a way to break up the shine and you'll find different nets this one here is the quarter-inch netting and you could put stuff in it but it cut down on the later on some of them borrowed British and helmets covers which are these eighth of an inch pipe covers and they became later on fairly standard sometimes guys would improvise and they would take a camouflage net that was used to cover your artillery pieces and stuff and just drape it over a helmet and use it to cover things now by time via time Korea rolled along guys would improvise this is a mass an big you would take a sandbag cut a big piece of burlap shape it around your helmet wet it down make it nice and smooth and you've got you got some degree of camouflage on your helmet they then came out with a cloth ring cover and I don't have one here we refer to it as the elusive green chemical green helmet cover when I was a young collector my surplus store had a whole box of them and every one had rust stains on it so I didn't buy it now I regret it because I can't find him people refer to it as the elusive olive drab cover what they did do is make the cover and a reversible camouflage pattern and this is what I was issued this was vietnam-era you'll see that green and this is the other flip side okay Green side or tan side and this was a helmet you see guys wearing in Vietnam now during that time they also came out with this item which I bought at the clothing sales store back in around 1970 and it was listed in the in all the manuals it's a camouflage cover that's a mosquito net okay and it even still has the original directions and price tag from the clothing sales store okay insect net head okay and it was never has a price tag on it how to remove it quickly let's see some clothing sales store for 95 all right and but you don't see pictures of guys actually wearing it but it was listed in the army manuals and there's one scene where they show guys putting it on the boonie cap and bringing it down to cover their face but it also served the purpose of disguising the helmet preventing it from shine now when the army went away after Vietnam to the battle dress uniform they started to make helmet covers that would blend in with the battle dress and I've got two examples here they're slightly different in their color and that was another thing for a while there in the late 70s early 80s if you went into a into a supply room and drew a helmet cover it might not be like the one of the guy next to you they must have had three or four five sub manufacturers and each one seemed to make it a little different and you can see the shade green here is compared to the shade of green there and these are both brand-new helmet covers you know one was going to one out in the field and wasn't Sun bleached or whatever but the BBU uniform and a helmet cover for the m1 steel pot and now we're going to go over to the next generation of helmets which is the course the Kevlar all right the first helmet here Kumbi p.m. was known as the PSA GT which I think it stood for protective armor support ground troop some like that and this helmet was pretty good camouflage cover and when they went to Grenada he ran into a public relations problem people noticed the design of the American helmet and it reminded them of certain people in the 1940s that wore helmets like this so all of a sudden there was this panic we don't want American soldiers looking like Nazi storm troopers so the word went out and they took apart camouflage netting which is mylar infrared defeating theoretically and they started draping it and letting it hang down and if you look at soldiers at Grenada particularly airborne a lot of their helmets look kind of sloppy because they want to break up the Nazi look so this was very common as an accessory people would tuck this in on their helmets and they hang down in front back whatever to disguise the shape my time Desert Storm rolled along people have gotten used to that shape now over here is that what I call the Desert Storm chocolate chip design now they were also one before then bye and I'll pull out this here the multinational force and observers at the non the Sinai and when I was stationed at Fort Bragg you would often find chocolate chip uniforms with dispatch but they would take the patch off before they sold tea and then they'd sell you the patch okay so that was the chocolate chip was leased Colin when they got to the desert in Desert Storm those complaints that the chocolate chip had too much brown in it so they developed what to call the tree colour camouflage pattern and that's what this is but that's still a PSA GT helmet only now it has more subdued colors next to it is a very unusual one very few people of aciem that is the chemical protective cover for your helmet if you were in what's called a mop suit mo PP mission oriented protective posture or your chemicals so you see pods chemical protective outer garment you needed to protect your helmet from chemicals like mustard gas phosgene and other neat things that are out there so they developed basically an imperious impenetrable cover and that's what this is now if you're going to be in the Arctic they developed a camouflage and cover and what I'm going to do some people think I didn't make this up this is the stock number everything else this is a real camouflage white cover the only reason it's not on a helmet is I don't own a small or extra small helmet for Mike in my collection but it's again it's it's white that's all it is it's a nice white cover and it doesn't have the little slits that you find on all the other covers because they really don't expect you to start taking branches and leaves and everything else and sticking them into your helmet the white helmet by itself should be enough protection all right now starting around the 1990s a Marine Corps wanted to be different they were before then they were wearing the same uniform as the army the BDU battle dress uniform but the Marines wanted to go to the digital design so they needed digital design camouflage cover for their helmets green side tan version okay the green version now it's called the winter version in the summer version Marines when we go to daylight million when we are under standard time they wear this when we are the daylight savings they wear this the next three helmets look similar to the PSA GT but they're what's called the mich helmet or the advanced combat helmet they trimmed away some of the Calais so that's less protection they felt they were losing too much in the way of hearing by having too much covering your ears so this first helmet which is all this cushioning inside much better helmet much better helmet okay protection versus the old PSA GT or Kevlar as we used to call it where your your head could take a nice concussion this is designed to prevent concussion this is in the famous army camouflage uniform which no everybody hated and which is being phased out the next one is the same helmet but now it is fixed up with a desert three-piece and the last helmet is I'm going to show you up here it's this real black dot which I can cover up or I can expose permits a helicopter to tell friendly from enemy forces it's an infrared basically reflector and the Army Combat Uniform has same thing on a sleeves that can be opened up or covered up depending on the mission but it's designed to prevent what we call friendly fire or blue blue on blue fire now it's got straps in the back to hold this on that's your goggles so they got loops in the back and you can have your goggles convenient in the pack if you need them but this is again it's got all the cushioning but it's in the multicam design which is what's worn in Afghanistan and in Iraq now the new pattern and I don't have it yet it's called Oct camouflage pattern Osito seizes OCP operational I think is operational camouflage pattern it's very similar to multicam II but there's a difference legally between paying royalties to the multicam company and not paying with aspheric multicam company so you will see helmets in the future looking more like this for now other Marines my guess is you're going to see this and this on Marine helmets now I know on the marine uniform they've worked in the Marine Corps symbol Eagle Globe and Anchor but I have not found any covers that have that I don't know why that's missing on the covers but we see here the selection of covers over the years on American helmets designed to help camouflage and prevent it from shining and giving away your position as well as protecting you I was made around 1916 right it was used and then something very interesting about this rifle they emailed me yeah this one was we barrel in July 41 and it has

Channel: Chris Butler

Views: 598,767

Rating: 4.8832154 out of 5

Keywords: steel pot helmet, American helmet, M1 steel pot, M1 helmet, helmet covers, M1 helmet covers, PASGT helmet, MICH helmet, Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, SOF operator, armored protection, body armor, helmet collection, history of body armor, US helmets, military helmets, milsurp

Id: WDTvS0jhHls

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/_Serene_]

The natural process of evolution, even equipment's rapidly improving.

[u/One_pop_each]

So when we get issued our MOPP Gear, we get the battle rattle with it, training helmet and flak jacket. We usually got the old school shiny green helmets that were so god damned uncomfortable.

But I got issued a nice padded helmet at my new base and it’s is infinitely more comfortable. It’s insane the difference the padding makes.

[u/[deleted]]

The green version of the Marine Corps digicam helmet seems to have a bit of a design flaw camouflage-wise with all those distinct bright white horizontal lines on it.. it could just be the video, but it really stands out a lot.

Also: why were helmet covers needed in the first place? If the original helmets were too shiny, would it not make more sense to scuff up the paintjob? Later revisions of the helmet could just use a more matte paint. It's hard to imagine this being the simplest / most cost effective option.