STEEL HELMETS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24203, 19 February 1942, Page 6

STEEL HELMETS

LOCAL MANUFACTURE E.P.S, RESOURCEFULNESS

SUITABLE MATERIALS FOUND Having arranged for the manufacture of hand fire pumps in quantity to its own design, the Emergency Precautions Service in Auckland has undertaken the production of steel helmets for its personnel. Officials of the service recently located in the city a stock of 18-gauge black steel plate, which appeared to be suitable for making into helmets. In order to test it, a helmet was roughly shaped, set up beside an army helmet of recent date and fired at with heavy buckshot at very short range. The shot pierced both helmets on direct impact, making rather larger holes in the locally-made one than in the other, but oblique hits were deflected in each case. Experts who witnessed the test considered that the improvised helmet was 90 per cent effective.

A search was then made for materials for the lining. It was found that there were available stocks of sponge rubber, oilcloth, hard fibre strips and metal rivets. A firm of luggage manufacturers, which had some of the materials required, undertook to make sample linings to a modified design, and did so with no great difficulty. An application to the Government for the release of sufficient steel for several thousand helmets was granted this week. Arrangements have now been made with two Auckland metalworking factories to have dies made and undertake the stamping of helmet bowls.

The need for steel helmets for E.P.S. personnel, particularly the Emergency Fire Service, has been felt for many months past. In Britain such headgear was issued to all men and women of the A.R.P. services well before the outbreak of war, and this policy proved its worth in the very first air raids. The steel helmet has become the standard headgear for all firemen in Britain, whereas in New Zealand the Emergency Fire Service, numbering some thousands of men, is still training in field service caps.