I have within my possession, as the title suggests, a very unusual M35 Luftwaffe reissue helmet. It’s marked ‘ET66′ and ‘3596′ on the inside. It also appears to have been reissued at one point or another in its life.

My unusual helmet began life as a double decal Army helmet, complete with the shiny green early-war paint. But somewhere around 1940 or 1941, it was reissued - not to serve in the Heer, like many others, but to serve in the Luftwaffe. This seems unusual to me, as I have never before encountered a helmet that went from the Heer to the Luftwaffe, or vice-versa. Henceforth it became a single decal Luftwaffe helmet and received an overcoat of textured Luftwaffe blue-gray paint. The liner is now a very dark brown from age.

In one of the pictures above, the Luftwaffe decal and paint are exposed enough to reveal a section of the wing and a talon of the Heer decal underneath. And if you look very closely, there is a very faint outline of the underlying, shield-shaped Heer decal.

I personally think that this helmet might have once belonged to a member of one of the Luftwaffe units present during the Warsaw Uprising, like the 1. Fallschirm-Panzer Division "Hermann Goering". This Polish site claims that the guerrillas defeated the supply unit of the "Hermann Goering" (Pcice) during the Warsaw Uprising, of which this helmet might have once belonged. And if this helmet did not come from that particular supply unit, then the "Hermann Goering" was reported to have fought in the Wola District of Warsaw. It might have come from there. Anyway, a Polish fighter must have taken much effort to scratch and file off the Luftwaffe decal with its swastika (if you look closely, there are lines indicative of knife slices) and hastily paint his own emblem on the right side of the helmet (instead of the German black-white-red tricolor, there is a Polish white-red shield flag). Again, Polish insurgents utilized captured German helmets in the fighting, and photos abound of them doing so.

Maybe it was issued to a Heer tank man early on in the war, and reissued when he transferred to the ‘Hermann Goering’ before being captured by a Polish guerrilla. I acquired it last year in a local antique shop for a comparatively low price.

What became of the Luftwaffe soldat who once possessed this helmet, or the Polish fighter that captured it from him, I do not know. However, much of the Luftwaffe paint on the top has since been lost to time. This helmet seems to have had a rough life!

Thank you for your time and consideration. Have a nice day!

Click to enlarge the picture