British RAF camo helmet with insignia and Canadian liner

Greetings everyone. I live in Alaska, and have a strong interest in the Aleutian campaign, where Canadian forces participated with Americans against the Japanese. This is my first posting.

I will post some Canadian memorabilia from Kiska later, but right now I need everyone's help in learning more about this helmet that I procured a while back. I have been told that it has a Canadian liner, but the 1940 shell is British. It is rather unique in that it has green and brown paint in a camouflage pattern and what appears to be an RAF hand-painted insignia.

I have an interest in Little Norway, where Norwegian flyers were trained during the war. I have several acquaintances from my time living in Norway that served in the RAF or Coastal Command as aircrew that have fond memories of their time in Canada.  

I found a picture of a period book on Little Norway with a helmet that seems to have a similar camouflage pattern to the one I own.

Can anyone enlighten me as to whether this helmet could have been used by the RAF or affiliate RNAF or RCAF during the war?  Please forgive my ignorance as I mainly collect Japanese, American and German headgear. I picked this up from an American seller on Ebay a while back.

Thank you.

Scott

This is a picture I scanned from a book about Little Norway. The helmet in the foreground has clearly been camo'd in a similar pattern.

Nice helmet, appears to be British manufacture 1940.The camo and eagle could be war time or painted post war. It is hard to determine.

I always like the painted, decaled, custom helmets.

Cheers... Mike

Hi Scott,

That's a really great looking helmet and the camo scheme is correct for the early "Phoney War" days in Britian. It is a British produced helmet shell but I've collected examples from Canadian contexts with swapped in Canadian produced liners. Canada didn't start producing Mk II helmets until 1940 so a number of British made examples ended up in Canadian use. Is the liner strap stamped VMC with a year?

The insignia would RAF or RCAF, but with a Canadian liner, I would be inclined to assume it was used by an RCAF member.

I am looking forward to seeing your Canadian Kiska material. It is a fascinating topic!

Cheers,

Geoff