CL/C made mkIV helmet dated 1945

Hello,

I have a quetion concerning a helmet I got yesterday that I have never seen or heard of before. It is a CL/C made mkIV helmet dated 1945. The liner is also dated 1945.
Can someone give any infomation concerning mkIV's produced in Canada by CL/C?
To me it seems logic that Canada started with the production of these helmets after ww2 since the used mkIII were returned to the Brits after the war had ended.
The first known mkIV were produced in England in 1945.

Thanks,

I have never seen a Canadian made Mk.IV ever...you must post some pics of this helmet! Especially the shell stamp. This would be quite a find since I thought none were made in Canada. I do know now that some units in Korea wore the Mk.IV, but I figured they were supplied by the British.

Not all mk.III's were returned to British stores. I know of a few vets who brought their Mk.III's back to Canada. And I own two of them now.

I shall try to post the helmet on my website today and put the link here.
I also have a Canadian used mkIII in my collection in a very good condition. see the link below:

http://www.dutchhelmets.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=217:een-vroege-mkiii-canadees-gebruikt&catid=125:tweede-wereldoorlog&Itemid=147&lang=nl

cheers,

Thats a beauty! It looks to be in fine condition.

Yes, the mkIII is in a very good condition. Dressing and net are original to the helmet.

This is the link to the mkIV CL/C 1945 helmet.

http://www.dutchhelmets.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=236%3Aeen-canadese-mkiv-gestempeld-clc-1945&catid=129%3Adiversen&Itemid=151&lang=nl

Not all pics are good. I made some of them a bit to hasty!
I would like some reactions and opinion please as I have never seen or heard of one of these before.

Thanks,

Dutchhelmets wrote:Yes, the mkIII is in a very good condition. Dressing and net are original to the helmet.

This is the link to the mkIV CL/C 1945 helmet.

http://www.dutchhelmets.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=236%3Aeen-canadese-mkiv-gestempeld-clc-1945&catid=129%3Adiversen&Itemid=151&lang=nl

Not all pics are good. I made some of them a bit to hasty!
I would like some reactions and opinion please as I have never seen or heard of one of these before.

Thanks,

Hi there,

I've been collecting Canadian helmets for a number of years and to my knowledge, CLC did not produce any Mk III or VI helmets. Although the Canadian army did wear them up to the 1960s (maybe even later).

It looks to me that someone took individual hand stands and added the CLC and 1945 to your helmet. The letters and numbers look a little irregular and uneven to me (my CLC Mk II helmets are very neatly struck...sometimes faintly). Yours seem to have been deeply struck.

In my opinion, someone has added the letters and dates in an attempt to enhance the helmet.

Any one else think the same or to the contrary?

Regards,

Geoff

Interesting helmet indeed! The shell stamps do look like they were hand-punched, but that liner is definitely intriguing. I have never seen a 1945 dated liner that looked like that before. Have you shown your helmet to Roger Lucy? He could probably shed some light on this rather neat helmet of yours.

I have seen REMPLOY stamped on field gear before...never a helmet liner. First for everything I guess.

Now that I looked closer at the liner, I now believe it is British made. CCL is a Brit liner manufacturer that is either Charles Collett Ltd. (London) or Christy & Co. Ltd. (London), no one is 100% sure yet. I believe it is Charles Collett Ltd. since Christy & Co. Ltd. is known to be a webbing manufacturer.

Thanks for the comments.

Geoff, i share your opinion concerning the stamp. It is very messy compared to my mkII CL/C stamps.

I do wonder why would someone try to enhance a mkIV helmet with a CL/C stamp while in general it is known that CL/C only produced the mkII during the war.

I posted a link on another forum so Roger Lucy can see the pics. I hope he has some answers on this one.

cheers,

If you are looking for opinions I'll give you one but it won't be favorable...... those obviously fake markings should be obliterated so as not to fool some unsuspecting collector down the road. I don't know who applied the markings but you should remove those photos from your site immediately. Fakers are known to post their creations on sites like this to test the waters as to whether or not they will fool anyone. Any serious collector would not want his name associated with such s***.

The helmet appears to be a fake or misstamped one. The liner is dated 1945, while this type apeared in 1959. According to some other collectors, the stamp could be an original as these CL/C stamps apear on CL/C made DP helmets.
I now truelly belive that the helmet is a fake one. I am keeping the helmet on my site with all the info with it. I have a page that i post fake dutch helmets. By doing this i hope that the information reaches collectors reducing the chance on spending a lot of money on a fake....
I got this helmet together with 10 others, manly mkII's. The helmet came from a Dutch collector that had this helmet in his possesion for about 15 years. He was not aware of it being a fake.

cheers,

It happens to all collectors sooner or later. As long as you are not out a huge amount of money, it can be chalked up to experience.

It is still an interesting helmet that shows the craftiness of todays helmet fakers.

I got the helmet as a gift, so i didn't loose money on this one.
And that is a good reason to post the helmet as a fake one. Hopefully it will warn collectors in the future.

cheers,