Fall 2026 Militaria and Aviation Auction
Lot 429:
Description
WWII U.S. Army M1 Steel Combat Helmet, Schlueter-Manufactured Front-Seam Swivel-Bale Shell Heat-Stamped ‘407A’ Over Embossed ‘S’, Fitted with a Matching Firestone High-Pressure Composite Liner Offered is a complete WWII U.S. Army M1 combat helmet assembly, its steel shell produced by the Schlueter Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, Missouri – a comparatively minor wartime contractor whose total output of roughly two million shells pales beside McCord Radiator’s twenty million, making genuine Schlueter examples a scarcer find on today’s collector market. Adopted in 1941 to succeed the WWI-pattern M1917A1, the M1 remained the U.S. Army’s standard combat helmet through Korea and beyond. This shell carries the front-seam rim construction associated with 1943-44 production, before manufacturers shifted the seam rearward in late 1944, and it retains the swivel-bale loops introduced around October 1943 to replace the earlier fixed bales that had proven prone to strap breakage in the field. Together these features place manufacture within the narrow window in which Schlueter was actively supplying shells to the Army before wartime procurement consolidated further toward McCord. The accompanying Firestone Tire & Rubber Company liner, embossed with its distinctive ‘F’ logo in the crown, was one of several composite manufacturers contracted from 1943 onward to produce the high-pressure phenolic-resin liners issued alongside these shells, and its presence here as a period-correct match is consistent with genuine, unaltered GI issue.
Share this lot:
