WW1 IMPERIAL GERMAN M16 CAMO PAINTED HELMET

The stamped sheet steel construction helmet retains about 80% of its hand painted camouflage paint. The camouflage paint is in dark green Yellow and red in a random patch pattern with the colors being separated by black stripes. The original artist also painted his initials into the camo design R.H. The helmet has both the dome headed chinstrap retaining rivets, both of the extended ventilation side lugs and all three of the flat headed liner retaining rivets. Shell is marked "Si66" for Eisenhüttenwerk Schlesien, Paruschowitz/ Oberschlesien Nice untouched original camo. The first "modern" steel helmets were introduced by the French army in early 1915 and were shortly followed by the British army later that year. With plans on the drawing board, experimental helmets in the field, ("Gaede" helmet), and some captured French and British helmets the German army began tests for their own steel helmet at the Kummersdorf Proving Grounds in November, and in the field in December 1915. An acceptable pattern was developed and approved and production began at Eisen-und Hüttenwerke, AG Thale/Harz, in the spring of 1916. These first modern M16 helmets evolved into the M18 helmets by the end of WWI. The M16 and M18 helmets remained in usage through-out the Weimar Reichswehr era and on into the early years of the Third Reich until the development of the smaller, lighter M35 style helmet in June 1935. Of Note: In July 1918 Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army, Erich Ludendorff issued a directive which clearly laid out the camouflage colors and pattern that was to be applied to all helmets in the field. The directive also included the amounts of paint that 1,000 helmets would require as five kilograms, (11Lbs), each of, green, ochre yellow and rust brown, and two kilograms, (4.4 Lbs), of black paint.