Brodie Type B or Mark I? Please help with ID.

[Quest Master]

Good morning, this is my first posting on this forum. I just obtained a WWI Brodie helmet. I would like to know as much history as I can about this exact helmet. Going through various pages on this forum, I compiled as much information as I could about the “Brodie” so I could identify my helmet. Let me know if I got anything incorrect:

WWI British Helmet Production manufacturing details:

Designed and patented in London in August 1915 by John Leopold Brodie.

Type A (few weeks of production, approximately 4,000 helmets).

Magnetic mild steel.

 

Type B (introduced in October 1915)

Hadfield manganese steel.

Chinstrap attachments riveted to helmet.

Front brim 25mm and rear brim 29mm, side brims 32mm to 35mm.

No markings.

Apple Green paint.

Raw Edge.

 

War Office Pattern (Helmet, Steel, Mk I) introduced spring of 1916

Chinstrap attachments bifurcated pins to helmet.

Front and rear 32mm and sides 43mm.

Edge bead.

Factory marked.

 

My helmet has a 32mm front brim, 32mm rear brim, 47mm sides. The helmet has a raw edge and bifurcated pins on the chinstrap attachments. The inside of the helmet is painted a grass green or apple green with a darker outside camouflage sand texture paint. Note the bullet “ding” on the front (wearers) left side. It did not have a liner when I obtained it.

This helmet is marked H/S 14, produced by Hadfield Ltd of Sheffield (produced helmets from 1916 to 1919). Heat lot 14 makes this one of their earliest produced helmets. Without knowing the exact month of 1916 that Hadfield started producing helmets, or how many helmets were in each Heat Lot and how many Heat Lots were produced each month, my best estimate is that this helmet is from the very beginning of 1916, with a raw edge of the very earliest of Mark I War Office Helmet Pattern helmets, with some Type B characteristics, before they started adding the edge bead for the Mark I.

Thank you,

Van

[peregrinvs]

I believe that’s the earlier type with the narrow chinstrap attachments and green rather than khaki paint. No doubt the specialists will shortly give you chapter and verse on it.

[Quest Master]

I forgot to mention, my example, for identification purposes, is non-magnetic steel.

[GRANVILLE]

I think you've got a nice early helmet which would have been Apple Green to start with (inside and out) and the texture coat applied in the course of time.

 

David

[Quest Master]

Is my assessment correct? Is this a Type B or a Mark I? Was it produced roughly April/May of 1916, being fielded by the Battle of the Somme, July 1916? 

Edited 5 October , 2021 by Quest Master