Landing Force helmet with white stripe

[GeneralCheese]

Anyone ever see this before? It's a typical late-war Landing Force helmet, but with a white stripe painted around the circumference. Pictures aren't mine, I will add many more with some decent quality when I have it in hand.

[Jareth]

Need lots more photos but I'm suspicious. Painted interior kanji doesn't look legit. Liner looks strange as well

[GeneralCheese]

Here's a close-up of the interior. Nothing seemed off to me about it.

[RussellM]

Here is a still from footage of Army troops surrendering to the Russians.

Regards

Russ

[GeneralCheese]

Here is a still from footage of Army troops surrendering to the Russians.

Regards

Russ

Now that's what I'm talking about! Thank you for validating that something like this existed.

[Jareth]

Quite a few photos exists showing white stripes around army helmets however I've never seen a photo (or a helmet) of a navy helmet with a white stripe. If the kanji on interior rim is confirmed to be GI gibberish than that makes rest of helmet highly skeptical

[Striking 9th]

The strokes don't look like the usual G.I. effort. It is a strange looking character though. The liner is pretty crazy for a Navy.

[Ron P]

I say late war economy liner using bits and pieces. Check out this liner.......

[Ron P]

Another late war pieced liner.

[GeneralCheese]

Yeah the liner is definitely a 'pieced together' one. The other reason I believe this is legit is because of where where it came from and price (not much).

[GeneralCheese]

Also plugging the kanji "司" into google translate returned "Tsukasa"

[Nick Komiya]

In the army, there were two cases I know of, where a white stripe around the helmet was used. One was the case of the troops surrendering to the Russians, as shown in post 4. They were officer candidates from the school in Ningan, China. Soldiers, who were non-infantry personnel that got sent to the school in the closing days of the war in the summer of 1945 were all forced to transfer to the infantry branch, and to denote their inexperience as infantry, had to wear a white stripe on their helmets while they were trained to destroy Russian tanks. So typically, a 20-year old ex-artillery officer candidate from this school would have the white ring around the helmet. During this training, the Russians attacked and they were mobilized. The odd numbered companies were sent to the front and mostly got decimated by the Russian tanks and the even numbered companies survived to be captured and sent to Siberia.
The other case was also an isolated case of Kempei, Army MPs in the steel city of Yawata in Kyushu using it as a temporary ID on their helmets for night-time visibility ,during their civil defense crowd control duties, but this, too, was only a local initiative and by no means a wide spread practice.

[GeneralCheese]

In the army, there were two cases I know of, where a white stripe around the helmet was used. One was the case of the troops surrendering to the Russians, as shown in post 4. They were officer candidates from the school in Ningan, China. Soldiers, who were non-infantry personnel that got sent to the school in the closing days of the war in the summer of 1945 were all forced to transfer to the infantry branch, and to denote their inexperience as infantry, had to wear a white stripe on their helmets while they were trained to destroy Russian tanks. So typically, a 20-year old ex-artillery officer candidate from this school would have the white ring around the helmet. During this training, the Russians attacked and they were mobilized. The odd numbered companies were sent to the front and mostly got decimated by the Russian tanks and the even numbered companies survived to be captured and sent to Siberia.
The other case was also an isolated case of Kempei, Army MPs in the steel city of Yawata in Kyushu using it as a temporary ID on their helmets for night-time visibility ,during their civil defense crowd control duties, but this, too, was only a local initiative and by no means a wide spread practice.

Thanks for the information. That's pretty fascinating. It is odd that this is a Landing Force helmet though. Did the landing forces have any artillery where officers in training could have been transferred?

[Nick Komiya]

What you have is a navy helmet, not a landing force helmet, unless you are one of those that claim all German tropical items to be DAK and all yellow Luft tabs to be paratrooper. Never heard of a navy example. Both the army and navy were savagely brutal to those who abused equipment, so this kind of departure from standard finishes would have only been applied reluctantly in very special circumstances and, if done for a temporary need, as above, would normally be done in an easy to restore manner. Unless it turns up in a navy man's memoir or so, the white paint will have to remain suspect. Unfortunately, authenticity of the helmet itself would only mean a mutilated original navy helmet without that kind of documented substantiation.

[GeneralCheese]

What you have is a navy helmet, not a landing force helmet, unless you are one of those that claim all German tropical items to be DAK and all yellow Luft tabs to be paratrooper. Never heard of a navy example. Both the army and navy were savagely brutal to those who abused equipment, so this kind of departure from standard finishes would have only been applied reluctantly in very special circumstances and, if done for a temporary need, as above, would normally be done in an easy to restore manner. Unless it turns up in a navy man's memoir or so, the white paint will have to remain suspect. Unfortunately, authenticity of the helmet itself would only mean a mutilated original navy helmet without that kind of documented substantiation.

Alright, I'll be sure to watch out for little old ladies painting up helmets they find at garage sales from now on!