Big Red Says:
Listen up Buttercup! I have a question for you...
So, TAKE FIVE!
After all this talk about complicated airborne equipment modification, I wanted to see if anyone out there has ever spotted one of the simplest and quickest solutions Paratroops used to keep their helmet and liner from separating during a jump?
Good Guess Bueller,
Leaving the strap attached to the liner, Troopers would fully extend the leather chin strap and wrap it around the helmet body.
Remember......
if your friends want to know how you gained your intel, tell em
Big Red Says!
FIVE'S OVER - MOVE OUT!
I went through Airborne School at Fort Benning in 1985. The requirement then was to use 100mph tape to secure both the front and back of the helmet line and the helmet – and it had to be done neatly! The only students to get the Kevlar helmet at the time were those with large heads. One of my classmates completed all 5 jumps with one hand on his reserve rip cord grip and one on top of his head to keep his brain bucket from flying off!
I graduated from airborne school in April 1971. At that time it was SOP to run the steel pot chinstraps through the helmet liner’s chip strap yokes. It never seems to have been done in WWII, based on pictures, but I don’t know when the Airborne Board made this a safety requirement. One thing; this technique uses up a lot of the strap by diverting it this way. If you’ve got a big head, stuffed into the helmet with the “brain blotter”, plus a shortened chin strap, it was anything but comfortable. Life sucked from the JMPI to the time you could rip the helmet off your head after you got off the DZ (you have to keep your helmet on while on the DZ—things are dropping from the sky…).
i thought you were going to say tape. ive seen A LOT of tape residue on airborne liners. especially later ones.
In the eighties, late eighties for me, just before the PASGT was wide spread issued. We were trained to run the steel pot chinstraps thru the jump liners chinstrap yolks.
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