How many German helmets brought back?

[foamspoon]

Ron,

I love this helmet. Is the bank and paint fake or just the decal?

Also to reply to an earlier reply...

ABill Shea told me once a lot of Vets liked daggers and optics, something they could use but never afford back home.

[RonR]

Ron,

I love this helmet. Is the bank and paint fake or just the decal?

Also to reply to an earlier reply...

ABill Shea told me once a lot of Vets liked daggers and optics, something they could use but never afford back home.

Brian,

Just the decal

Bill Shea was right, but here are the "Big Five".........




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[RonR]

A Helmet.....



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[RonR]

A Flag....



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[RonR]

A Dagger....



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[RonR]

A Luger.......



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[RonR]

And an Iron Cross.....




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[RonR]

And perhaps.... the second "Big Five".........




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[Spanish Freiwillige]

With this question it also strikes my mind how many were destroyed to salvage their steel. So i giees that the number was thinned downed pretty much after the war

Well I have a littel anecdote concerning this particular issue, I met a man in Mexico, in the early 2000´s, I believe, and he told me that his father made a lot of money by importing german helmets into the country and melting them down for the steel, he remebered how the mexican workers would put on a helmet while the loded carts with the others while metling them down....

He said some had decals some didnt.......

so I guess that a lot fo material was recycled

[Kengir]

Seems that helmets weren't the only thing melting

[TheCleaner]

Hi,
A friend of mine who used to live in the countryside in France told me, when he was a teenager his big pleasure was to shoot at german helmets with his father's hunting rifle. Lids were collected for free from farms or found directly in the countryside.
When I asked him, how many helmets did you shoot at ?
he answered me : I don't remember, but a big amount. they had differents insignia on the side, some were painted with several color and the majority of them had a piece of leather inside.
Yes I know my friend, it's called a liner....
ciao!

Well i shot at German and US helmets too in the 90's before i got interested in WWII, a friend of my father who is a gunsmith had a pile of helmets to pick from, all had holes as far as i remember