Although the use of aluminum foil had been experimented with in the late 1800s, in the middle of the 1930s the first sun helmets came into use that featured a layer of aluminum foil inside the dome as a protection against the heat. Continue reading
Author Archives: Roland Gruschka
British made for British maid?
This article deals with pith helmets which were specially made for female customers. Is this an issue for the Military Sun Helmets website? Yes. However, the subject is not pith helmets as they were issued to female medical or communications/clerical staff in the armies of several countries. Rather, it deals with the often difficult distinction between helmets for men and for women, something that should be useful knowledge for the military collector as well. Continue reading
Fifty Shades of White: Blanco’ing a Sun Helmet
The habit of whitening sun helmets is a bit like getting shoes polished. The only difference is that shoe polish preserves the leather and prolongs its life, whereas any white substance on a sun helmet can only have visual and reflective reasons. For a military and civilian environment alike, that may have been sufficient reason why it was done. And how? I tried it myself – the blanco’ing of a sun helmet. Continue reading
No plaintiff, but a judge: The Formal Dress Wolseley Helmet of Sir Norman George Armstrong Edgley, KC.
Sir Norman George Armstrong Edgley, KC. (Author’s collection)
According to the former owner, this part of Sir Norman´s legacy – consisting of his Wolseley helmet, album of photographs, Royal Warrant, some more papers and his fly whisk – came from a private house auction and was brought there for fancy dress purposes. A nice idea – and a nice imagination as well, to go to a fancy dress party just covered with Sir Norman´s helmet and swinging his fly whisk. If one gets arrested dressed like this – there is still the Royal Warrant, signed by George VI., to have at least some kind of legitimation. But were to put it without a pocket? Maybe folded in the liner of the helmet, the same place where Lord Kitchener, according to his biographer Philip Magnus, carried dispatch leaflets with him. Continue reading
The Fly Girls of the British Empire
Sometimes, research leads to unexpected results. This was the case while trying to find some more photographic evidence for the use of the “Helmet, Cork, Aviation”. Peter Suciu has already written about the two different types of this interwar period Royal Air Force equipment (here) but obviously the helmet was not only used by His Majesty´s Forces but was also popular with civilian users.
Even a book on a civil expedition can be a source for military pith helmets. (Author´s collection)
Pith Helmet with Radiator Grill
Extravagant shape & technical innovation: Barnard´s Patent from 1899. (Author´s collection)
In 1899, London hat maker Walter Barnard of Jermyn Street, St. James’s, patented a fashionable helmet with a metal grill between sweatband and hat to allow ventilation. Here is an example of this helmet and later a variation whose ventilation strip was produced in rubber. Continue reading
The Rodel Helmet of Thomas Townend & Co. – A Surprising Construction
An extremely rare, in fact possibly the only known survivor, of Thomas Townend’s double-helmet commercially named the “Rodel.” (Author’s collection)