Camouflage Helmet Liner II

So, TAKE FIVE!

Here are some fascinating details about the Westinghouse Jungle Liner.

The Liner, Helmet, M-1, Jungle Troop a.k.a. "Cammo Liner" was a standard Westinghouse high-pressure plastic liner that was taken from completed stocks of liner assemblies to have a four-color camouflage pattern applied over its existing olive drab painted finish. Despite the hand airbrushing and varying patterns, the use of stencils to create the shapes gave all these liners a similar look.

The Quartermaster’s exploration into the use of camouflage, as it related to the M-1 helmet liner, was done for two reasons:

1. To disguise the helmets distinctive outline.
2. To prevent reflective glare.

Although they believed that the painted pattern worked well for breaking up the liner’s shape, it did not do much to prevent glare. By early spring 1944, the Quartermaster had concluded that the use of a small hole net was the best option for camouflaging the liner or helmet assembly. The net eliminated glare, and the addition of indigenous plant life would satisfactorily break up the silhouette.

In March 1944, the Chicago Quartermaster Depot CQMD) received orders to discontinue procurement of the Jungle Liner. The Office of The Quartermaster General (OQMG) cited the finding that using nets to cover the liner or steel helmet provided more effective camouflage protection than paint. Interestingly, this order to discontinue also included a directive to repaint any remaining inventory of Jungle Troop liners back to the standard lusterless olive drab specification.

At the time the CQMD informed Westinghouse of the cancellation of the Jungle Liner and the directive to repaint, Westinghouse had approximately 300,000 camouflaged liners packaged and ready for shipment. These camouflaged liners were taken out of inventory, unboxed, and sent back through the paint booth, repainting them with an overcoat of standard olive drab at a cost of twelve cents each.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the Army spent $474,000.00 camouflaging 300,000 liners, which in their camouflaged state would have performed no differently than the standard olive drab-painted liners, especially inside of a helmet. The Army then decided to spend an additional $36,000.00 repainting these liners.

Collector’s Note:

A footnote in a Quartermaster Historical Study makes a short one-line reference to the possibility of the modification of helmet bodies with a camouflage pattern for jungle troops: “At the same time the procurement of camouflaged steel helmets was discontinued.”

So, were helmet bodies factory-modified with camouflage patterns? Thus far, there has been no concrete evidence, documented or empirical, to suggest that there ever was a factory-applied camouflage version of a Jungle Troop steel helmet.

A helmet body went up for auction in the mid to late 2000s, displaying a brush-applied "dabbed" pattern that resembled the Westinghouse pattern in color and pattern. The collecting community did not embrace this singular example, and there was never a satisfactory resolution to the debate over whether it was evidence, faked, or field-applied.

This illustrates how collectors can ignore what they know for what they want to be true—or what Sterling Archer calls entering the...

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