I was watching the first episode of Band of Brothers this morning. On the first training parachute drop, Easy Company was wearing a plastic football helmet. The subsequent training jump Easy Company was wearing the typical GI helmet. Were plastic football used in 1943?

__________________
Wherever my mind isn't
Jim

I found this when I did a search:

During the earliest days of WWII paratroopers, Riddell designed a modified football helmet with front and rear leather protection, designed to keep twigs and branches away from the neck of the paratrooper. However supplies apparently ran short, so football helmets were often used in their place.

During the pre war development of Paratroop, Glider, and Air Assault (jump out of taxing planes) the football helmet (clear plexiglass) was the normal in the photos.

I ask my wife's uncle if he had never seen one from mid 43 to the end of the war. They only had standard steel pots with the double strap. Latter replacements had normal infantry helmets. (He was a glider trooper in 1/325 of the 82nd. He saw from D-Day on. We would call him a savvier case of PTSD today!)

Ivan

Before my time, for sure. I know that back in the early days army airborne units trained together, not only parachute training but also combat tactics and weapons. By my time in the army parachute training was completely separate, only 3 weeks (ground week, tower week, jump week), then everyone went on to the next assignment. My understanding of the original airborne units is that they went through all training together as a unit, then moved on to combat assignments as a functioning unit.

One of the problems in Vietnam, in my opinion, is that most troops arrived as individual replacements, moving into existing units consisting of a lot of unknown soldiers. One's initial status was known as FNG (something about being the New Guy), maybe as a replacement for a guy who was close friends with others in the unit, maybe replacing a casualty, certainly no one around with whom we shared any experience or joint training. Not the best recipe for a team that required close cooperation and reliance on each other.

More rambling going on here. Yes, I served with the 101st Airborne Division, but I was not one of the old Band of Brothers.

Airborne and glider training was so new in WWII that a lot of it was made up as they went along.
Two of the best books about the paratroops in WWII are "Currahee!" By Donald Burgett-101st, and "The Making of a Paratrooper" by Kurt Gabel-17th Airborne.
The Individual Replacement System was Marshall's biggest mistake, even at the time it was recommended to do it by squads or at least a 4 man team, combat has a way or forcing people to do otherwise.

The first episode starts just outside of Toccoa Ga. nine miles east of my house. The original mess hall is still there as well as a museum.

__________________
LIVE FROM THE DAWGHOUSE

One of our neighbors was a glider pilot. He said there wasn't much to it, you just fly them in and crash them, then walk out and get another one. I was fourteen and getting a load of hay bales off of his place when he flew in right over the pickup I was driving with his Piper Cub. He leaned out of the plane and hollered, if you're going with me get in. It was my first plane ride and quite a thrill. He flew up, down and all around, went to an airport and filled it with gas and flew me back to the hay field. He did things with that little plane it shouldn't be able to.

He would fly that Cub hunting and starting coyotes running. The second time he wrecked it he couldn't put it back together. A good old man.

My Dad towed gliders and troopers from a C-47. I know he participated in Market Garden and I believe Bastogne too.
Oh, what a time it must have been.

__________________
“Look life in its iron face”

Great stories. Back in the 1970s when I was a uniform LE officer occasionally I would draw a beat assignment downtown where at the time on there were a number of beer joints. One night I arrested a well dressed older gentleman for being intoxicated. He was never any trouble. At the docket office I asked him what he did in the war when he said he was a vet and he had a small set of wings on his lapel. Told me he was Glider Pilot in WWII. After that if I saw him downtown and he had been drinking I took him home to his small modest apartment about 5 blocks away. Admire all those guys who served in combat. A lot of undiagnosed PTSD resulting in drinking for those fellas.

I knew several from the 101St, 82nd, 1st Ranger Battalion and 2nd Armor and most of those were my friends. Those were all hard working/hard drinking men. They were all pretty happy drunks, which is a good thing! In their old age they were still very dangerous (if need be). In their youth, they're some of the most dangerous men to ever walk the face of the earth!

The one's I knew were Cops, carpenters, airline clerks, plumbers, and business men; You know the type, Just plain Americans and dads!

Ivan

The Germans found their Stahlhelm, the British their Brodie aka "soup plate"
totally unsuited for airborne use, hence they developed designs that were quite similar, with us it was the M-1. When Uncle Sam decided he needed a newer helmet he went to the Metropolitan Museum in NYC which has a very large armor collection, the prototype of the M-1 was made by the armorer of the Met in 1939 using tools that belonged to the armorer of Napoleon III.
In WWII Uncle Sam's paratroops were the only one who carried a reserve chute.

Here's a pic from Life Magazine, May 1941 and the paratrooper in training is wearing the Riddell helmet that chief38 referenced in post #2. The leather neck protector is clearly visible.





By 1943, based on this Colliers magazine, the trainees were wearing the MD2 Bale helmet with the Hawley Paratrooper Liner.





Lots of good reading for the paratrooper buffs here. Starts with the M41 Jump Jacket/Pants. Just click "Next" at the top right corner of the page to scroll through helmet history:

Airborne Paratrooper M41 Jump Suit with M41 Jump Jacket and M41 Jump Pants | airbornejumpjacket.com

By the way, until fielding PASGT "Kevlar" helmet Army wide in 1985, the M1 "Steel Pot" helmet was the issue helmet and it was very similar the the 1943 MD2, and in fact saw service in WWII, Korea and Vietnam, as well as all the "little" cold war conflicts. I went to jump school in 1985 and the issued training helmet was still the M1 and it looked almost identical to the 1943 MD2 helmet. Me, vintage 1985, U.S. Airborne Course, rocking the Steel Pot Paratrooper Helmet.

Pictures from my visit to Normandy in 2013. My wife and I rented a car and stayed in St Mere Eglise for several days and visited all the WWII sites there on our own (Both beach sites and Airborne Sites). The best way to see it. Great airborne museum right off the church square in St. Mere Eglise. Visited the Meredet River Causeway site La Fiere Bridge where a battalion of the 82nd held off repeated attacks by the Germans for 3 days. See picture of General Jim Gavin of 82nd Airborne preparing for the Market Garden jump. Good picture of the equipment and weapons he carried. He always carried an M1 rather than a carbine.

Attached Images

	General James Gavin.jpg (75.8 KB, 35 views)
	DSCF0434.jpg (164.6 KB, 27 views)
	DSCF0514.jpg (120.8 KB, 28 views)
	DSCF0638.jpg (85.6 KB, 27 views)
	DSCF0574.jpg (123.0 KB, 26 views)

They also replaced soldiers in units during WWII. The replacement soldiers came from a replacement depot or as it was called the Repple-depple.