BTS Helmet Collection: The Jet Age

[0:03] Hello, I'm Jessica Williams, curator of  history and collections at the Intrepid   Museum. We are here in our collection  storage space continuing our look at   uh flight helmets from Intrepid's collection.  In the last video, we looked at and talked   about some of our World War II flight helmets.  And today we're moving into the jet age. Now,   um at this point, aircraft are flying faster,  they're flying higher. Also, during the jet age,   we have the introduction of ejection seats. And  when a pilot ejects uh subjects the pilot to   winds and cold temperatures and they require  more head protection. Also, these helmets,   unlike the World War II helmets, are made out of  harder materials to protect a pilot's head against   impact. As you can see, this is a hard helmet. It  has these ridges on the top which reinforce the  

[0:50] helmet. And looking at it from the outside here,  um you can see just like the World War II helmets,   this helmet does not have any goggles or visor  on it, but there were attachments where you could   um snap goggles into the helmet and adjust them  using these tabs. There's also attachments for a   microphone which could be attached right here.  Now, one interesting thing about this helmet   is that there still is a fabric helmet inside of  it. It's actually in two pieces. And so the the   headphones with this donut that went around the  pilot's ear to help insulate from noise is here   on the inside on the separate helmet which is the  separate fabric helmet which then attaches to the   to the rigid part on the outside. So it is a kind  of a combination of the World War II helmet with  

[1:39] this extra um protective exterior. So now if we  take a look at this helmet over here, this is   more typical of the helmets that would have been  worn on board Intrepid in the 1960s through the   ship's decommissioning in 1974. This particular  helmet was owned by a pilot named Bill Litwin. He   earned his wings as a naval aviator in 1953 and he  flew off Intrepid beginning in 1961 with Squadron   VA65. Um he flew the A1 Skyraider off Intrepid  and he had hundreds of arrest landings on board   the carrier. And so we look at this helmet and  you know there are some similarities here. It's   another um another rigid helmet but um there are  some some changes here as well. Um one thing to  

[2:20] note about this one is it is now all one piece.  So there is not a separate fabric lining inside   here. So we can look inside and see the padding  um for earphones inside the helmet, not attached   to a separate piece of fabric. You can see that  it's um styrofoam essentially here on the inside.   And then if we look at the outside, we'll notice  another big change here is that there is a visor   that's integrated into the helmet. So the knob  is missing from this one, but there was a little   knob that the pilot could use to lower down  this visor here to get some eye protection um   built right into the helmet. One thing I think is  very distinctive about this helmet is that you can  

[2:54] see it's covered on the outside with reflective  tape. And pilots like to personalize their helmets   um often using uh reflective tape like this. And  that's something that we will talk a little bit   more about. in a future video. Pilots weren't the  only crew members on board Intrepid who required   head protection. For more behind-the-scenes  videos, visit intrepid museum.org.