Italian Tank Helmets?

[user1000]

What's the story on the Italian tankers helmets? How did they come about? Are they leather and why the flap?

Edited July 16, 2015 by user1000

[IronCat60]

Leather helmets used in motor-racing were adopted as head protection. The design of the leather helmets was a ridged dome of pressed and glued together leather to absorb impact. The inner layers are cushioned by quilting a pattern of "pockets" filled with shredded leather or horse hair. A "skirt" around the lower half provides protection from the elements as all early race cars were open cockpit.     

 

This is a photo of a vintage Italian race car helmet.

     

[user1000]

Could have been Italians motorcycle helmets as well. Interesting Idea to transfer it to a tank crew. The US had football helmets and France I believe had horseback helmets?

Edited July 16, 2015 by user1000

[IronCat60]

The U.S. tankers had a love-hate relationship with their "football helmets". The ventilation holes let in rain water so they were usually sealed with tape and painted over to secure the ends of the tape from coming loose. And what kinda tape you ask, well good ole "duck-tape" was used as it was a new issue item as evident from this next few paragraphs.

 

The Idea for what became duct tape came from Vesta Stoudt, an ordinance-factory worker and mother of two Navy sailors, who worried that problems with ammunition box seals would cost soldiers precious time in battle. She wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 with the idea to seal the boxes with a fabric tape, which she had tested at her factory. The letter was forwarded to the War Production Board, who put Johnson & Johnson on the job. They had been making medical adhesive tapes from duck cloth tapes since 1927. A team headed by Johnny Denoye and Bill Gross developed the new adhesive tape to be ripped by hand, not cut with scissors.

 

Their new unnamed product was made of thin cotton duck tape coated in waterproof polyethylene plastic with a layer of rubber based gray adhesive ("Polycoat") bonded to one side. It was quickly adapted to repair military equipment and weapons. This tape, colored in olive-drab was nicknamed "duck tape" by the soldiers. 

 

Now back to the U.S. tanker helmet. A liner for under the shell was issued for the colder and wetter European climate but the neck flap rested on the back of the neck just about jacket collar height and was called the "funnel". It usually became tucked into the collar interior due to movement and "funneled" the rain water running off of it into the jacket. Once again duct tape was applied to extend this neck flap to prevent that problem.

 

Also a steel helmet was issued to fit over the tanker helmet liner to give more protection to the crews. But as the crew helmet liner was used as support for the steel helmet the designers had to make it stop at the top of the earphones built-into the crew helmet or the steel helmet would be too wide if it covered the earphones. So the lower protection of the wearers head was the same as if they didn't wear a steel shell at all.

 

Incidentally the number of wounded in tank crews for the British and Germans was significantly higher than for the Americans.

This was due to the fact neither country had their crews wear helmets so they suffered a much greater amount of head wounds and a lot of the head wounds were caused by accidents in the tank while driving over rough terrain. Banging your head off a tank tends to put you out of action for awhile. 

[IronCat60]

O.k. I tried to find the link that stated there was a special steel helmet designed for tankers to wear and could not find it.

 It appears the most common used steel helmet was the ordinary M1 pot with the liner removed. In addition, even with the M1 liner removed, the fit was a very tight one. In fact, the fit was so tight that the headset retainer bars had to be jammed under the M1 helmet. Even with this accomplished, the M1 helmet sat very high on the tanker's head and therefore offered little protection around the ears.

 

Despite the practical difficulties, some tankers did choose to wear their steel pot over their tank helmet for at least a little additional protection against shrapnel. Some tankers claimed that they wore their M1 shell over their M1938 tank helmet during inclement weather to keep the rain and drafts from entering the M-1938 ventilation holes (as discussed previously).

[Chirac75]

The french tankers had some kind of compromise. Steel helmet with leather flap in the back and "cushion" buoy in the front.

The front might have been thought as a shock absorbant while in the tank much like the leather pillow found on german plane gunsights (?).

 

 

[user1000]

Thanks for the info this is getting interesting