Helmet cover

The helmet cover was first used by French soldiers during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Helmet covers are usually made out of canvas or cotton and come in many

camouflage Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the b ...

designs, for example: woodland, desert or urban, and different camouflage patterns like

MARPAT MARPAT (short for Marine pattern) is a multi-scale camouflage pattern in use with the United States Marine Corps, designed in 2001 and introduced from late 2002 to early 2005 with the Marine Corps Combat Utility Uniform (MCCUU), which replace ...

CADPAT Canadian Disruptive Pattern (CADPAT; french: links=no, dessin de camouflage canadien, DcamC) is the computer-generated digital camouflage pattern developed for use by the Canadian Armed Forces. Four operational variations of CADPAT have been use ...

and ACUPAT. It can also be used for UN peacekeeping missions with a UN Blue colour helmet cover. White covers are sometimes used in snow regions. Helmet covers are generally a flat colour to stop any reflection from a metal helmet. Helmet covers are attached to the helmet in many different ways, such as a tight rubber lip which goes all the way around the helmet rim and is pulled on and peeled off, draw-strings, and types which are attached to the helmet suspension system. The earliest helmet covers were retained simply by being "sandwiched" between the liner and the shell. Helmet covers help break up the helmet's distinctive silhouette and eliminate glare (especially if wet) and can muffle the sound of foliage striking or brushing the helmet. Helmet covers are used by most armies and are in the camouflage pattern of the country/military's camouflage pattern, but some armies have different covers. For example, the

Austrian Armed Forces The Austrian Armed Forces (german: Bundesheer, lit=Federal Army) are the combined military forces of the Republic of Austria. The military consists of 22,050 active-duty personnel and 125,600 reservists. The military budget is 0.74% of nati ...

wear several different helmet covers instead of one standardized cover. The Israeli Defense Forces use the ''mitznefet'', a large, floppy helmet cover to break up the outline of the soldier. The US Army from 1953 to the mid-late 1980s used a dual-sided camouflage cover (one side a green leaf pattern, the other a brown and tan desert pattern) with its steel helmets while the rest of the uniform was green. The US Marine Corps adopted reversible camouflage helmet covers in late 1942. This led to the orders of "green-side out" or "brown-side out." Another type of helmet cover is the

mesh A mesh is a barrier made of connected strands of metal, fiber, or other flexible or ductile materials. A mesh is similar to a web or a net in that it has many attached or woven strands. Types * A plastic mesh may be extruded, oriented, exp ...

net cover, which also helps reduce the metal glare from combat helmets as well as giving an opportunity to add natural camouflage such as grass, leaves and twigs. This type of cover is however not as widely used anymore, as the modern camouflage cloth covers in various patterns are more common on modern combat helmets, and most cloth covers have cut-outs for placing foliage anyway. A common mistake is to attach too much or too long foliage which waves about when moving. Military camouflage {{Mil-hist-stub