Nazi Germany m.38 Fallschirmjäger combat helmet

The Fight of the Century!

(A premium seating ticket to the first Louis Schmelling fight)

American heavyweight boxer Joe Louis met with his German counterpart Max Schmeling twice.  In the first fight Schmeling won by a knockout in twelve rounds.  Adolf Hitler used it as an opportunity to trumpet Aryan superiority and German mastery in the ring as well as on the world stage.

The second matchup came on June 22, 1938; the results couldn't have been more different, Louis won by a knockout in 2 minutes and 4 seconds, Schmeling was only able to land two punches.  Louis was the heavyweight champion of the world, and the master race had been delivered a KO.

Louis towers over his vanquished opponent.

Hitler made great overtures to Schmeling, all of which the fighter rebuffed.  "I am no superman in any way" Schmeling said.  Further, much to Hitler's displeasure, when Schmeling was fighting in the U.S. he refused to fire his Jewish promoter, Joe Jacobs. 

With the outbreak of the Second World War, and Schmeling back home in Germany, he was drafted into the Luftwaffe and was accepted into the elite Fallschirmjager forces.

Schmeling on the cover of the German propaganda magazine Signal, wearing his m.38 fj helmet.  Schmeling was in no way sympathetic to the Nazi cause, and post-war anecdotes have him sheltering two Jewish children at the beginning of the war.

Wounded in the assault on Crete Schmeling was medically discharged and spent the remainder of the war participating in morale-raising exhibition bouts.

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Joe Louis however, was a willing volunteer, joining the US Army early in the war.  In a highly publicized meeting with the president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt is credited with saying to the "Brown Bomber"; "Joe, we need muscles like yours to defeat Germany."

Louis spent the entirety of the war assigned to US Army Special Services where he participated in exhibition fights to raise morale and boost sales of War Bonds.

In a period of racial discrimination and so-called white supremacy, Louis was able to win over many whites with his whole-hearted support of the war effort and his much-reprinted and much quoted statement; "...we'll win because we're on God's side."

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Frequently over the years, I have been the grateful recipient of helmets given to me as gifts. You can only imagine my delight, this Spring as a acquaintance gifted me with what is now a show-piece of my collection - the much coveted German m.38 paratrooper (fj) helmet.

Although the helmet lacks chinstrap and liner, the shell is in very good condition with the paint about 80% present and the decal wonderfully intact.

Just for the sake of display I added a reproduction chinstrap, and rather than compromise the helmet's originality by undoing the bolts to mount the straps, I merely tucked the ends of the straps under the liner band.  The result is, to me, visually pleasing.

The shell shape is essentially that of an m.35 with the brim and skirt removed.

The liner is secured to the shell by four robust screw and nut combinations.  These slotted screws represent the third and final production design of the m.38.

All that remains of the liner is the aluminum liner band, affixed  by the the screw and nuts...

which also secure the chinstraps, of which, here, only the ends remain.

The size, as in the m.35 family of helmets, is stamped

 inside the shell.

Another number, the significance of which is unknown to me, is stamped just above the rolled edge at the inside front of the shell.

Holes on the liner band allowed the leather liner to be attached.

The liner band is joined by solder at the front.

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Most of the green paint remains intact.

The slightly misapplied decal gives this helmet some character.

And now, the usual gallery of the helmet in action:

Often FJ helmets were fitted with a fabric camouflage cover.

An FJ trooper decked out in a polka dot ascot and smoking a cigarette;

as if combat wasn't deadly enough.

And what of Joe and Max?

Here they are in 1971. 

These two champions developed a close friendship that lasted until Louis' death in 1981.   Schmeling was one of his old friend's pall-bearers.

 In 2005 at the ripe old age of ninety-nine, Max Schmeling went to his celestial reward, leaving behind the memory of his role in what became known as "The Fight of the Century"...perhaps a metaphor for that even greater fight of the century...

the Second World War.

See you next time with another cool helmet from the collection.

Mannie

Thailand m.30/32 combat helmet

 A recycling story...

If you were a nation occuppied by the Japanese in WWII you find yourself awash in Japanese military materiel upon their surrender.  Suddenly your army (such as it is) has lots of helmets.

Such was the case with Thailand.  A small army, a whole bunch of Japanese helmets, just add insignia, and away you go.

The distinctive Japanese 30-32 profile in Siamese livery.

Ventilation holes in the dome.

This example has mounts for the French m. 26 -style liner and chinstrap.

Close-up of riveted mounting frame for the liner...

though the mounting holes for the original Japanese liner are apparent.

Back story...

Remember back in the late '70s and early 80's seeing ads in military magazines for genuine Japanese helmets for only 15 (later 25) bucks? Sounded like a rip-off, but what the heck, it was only fifteen dollars, so I gave it a shot. The helmet I got in the mail proved the adage: "You get what you pay for"; a stripped-down Japanese helmet sans liner and insignia of any sort.


On the plus side it did have a chinstrap, though it was unlike any I was used to seeing on Japanese helmets, and had the French-style suspension for a liner intact. What was most intriguing about this helmet though, was the printing on the remnants of newspaper that were stuck to it (obviously this helmet had been in storage for some time). The script on the newspaper fragments was unlike any I'd seen before. It was definitely not Japanese, nor was it Chinese or Korean. That puzzled me. Also, on the front of the shell, where an insignia had been, was the distinct and symmetrical outline of that missing insignia. The outline was clear and very distinctive, and again unlike the shape or size of any Japanese insignia that I was familiar with.

Mystery aside, I felt a little sheepish about this helmet and pretty much tucked it away in the old "live and learn" box, where it stayed for almost 25 years until it suddenly became somewhat of a prize.


In the intervening 25 years a couple of things happened: the publication of that outstanding book by Paolo Marzetti "elmetti di combattimento di tutto il mondo" (Combat Helmets of the World) and the advent of ebay.

Marzetti's book gave me my first glimpse of the Siamese model 1930-32 which was simply a salvaged Japanese 30-32 with a replaced liner (French m.26 style) and leather chinstrap.

  And mounted on the front, with that distinctive outline that had so puzzled me was the embossed metal Siamese insignia. Shortly after that, as ebay came into full-flower, I successfully searched out and obtained that helmet plate. The helmet came out of storage, the insignia was affixed, and suddenly that cast-off was placed front and center in my collection with some of the other more obscure models.

A very nice ending indeed.

See you next time with another cool helmet from the collection.

Mannie

Vietnam, National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) combat sun helmet (c.1968)

Hey look...It's me.  I wasn't in Vietnam but as a radioman aboard Naval Communication Station Guam during the war I supported the effort by communicating with United States warships operating off the coast of Vietnam. 

How I wish I still had that hair.

The United States was involved in the Vietnam War from 1959 to 1975; a sixteen year investment in blood that led to 58,315 American deaths, and countless lives among the Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.

And today I own shoes that were recently made in Vietnam.  So it goes.

This is widely accepted as the first war that the United States lost...though keep your eyes on Afghanistan gang.

The United States, and its allies, brought massive amounts of men and materiel to that war.  We came up against an unwinnable insurgency war with the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) and the highly motivated regular troops of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).  Caught between these two formidable foes...fighting on their own ground...for their own independence...they were indefatigable and ultimately victorious.  And now they make great shoes.

Today I work as a Park Ranger for the National Park Service and I'm stationed in Washington DC on the National Mall.  Frequently I work at the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial.  It is a sobering reminder of the cost of the War to the American people.

Why we lost the war is still argued here in the United States and many diehards insist that we won, though they're grumpy old men who are only getting older (and grumpier); but as a people we seem to agree that we lost, and we're over it.  For a while we were averse to getting into another Vietnam-like "quagmire"...but we eventually got over that too...didn't we?

Enough with the history of the war, my Vietnamese manufactured shoes, and my one-time luxurious and curly hair, and on to the helmet.

Now for the walkaround:

This wartime version is a light grayish-green color.  The helmet is still standard issue for the Vietnamese army and the post-war model is a very deep green.

The helmet is cheaply made and very lightweight.  Though non-ballistic it made operating in a tropical environment somewhat more comfortable for the wearer.

The disc bearing the insignia of the national Liberation Front is surrounded by an officer's wreath.

The ventilator cover.

The inside of the ventilator.

The helmets, worn by both the the NVA and the VC, were manufactured in North Vietnam and made their way south via the notorious "Ho Chi Mihn trail" - the indestructible supply route which day and night saw the transport of tons of food and materiel to the Viet Cong forces.

The size is inked on the label.

The rudimentary headband is adjustable by a cord and a series of holes in the plastic.

The chinstrap, which is of very inexpensive plastic, is adjusted by two sliding buckles and secured by a hollow rivet.

The liner is simple, cheap, and fragile plastic.

Female fighters of the Viet Cong have camouflage covers

on their helmets.

Bottom line? they won, we lost. End of story.

See you next time with another cool helmet from the collection.

Mannie