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US Navy Flight Helemts Decorations


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that a small amount of squadron insignia etc... seems to be showing up in some squadrons. I'm guessing that this not a Navy wide thing but certain squadrons are decorating the "Brain Buckets" a little. VFA-103 comes to mind. I just got the Hasegawa 1/48th VFA-102 50th annivesary F-18F in a trade and noticed there were tiny decals for the flight helmets.

Anyone know which squadrons are and which aren't and would there be any pictures?

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ALL the fleet squadrons usually do something insignia related to the helmets. I think you're allowed 20 sq. inches of colored, reflective tape on the helmets. (Yes, it all scotchlite) The majority color needs to be white reflective tape with a 2 inch x 2 inch square of velcro at the top (so you can affix the rescue strobe light there).

Somebody with an all white helmet is still in flight school, the FRS or a community that rarely wears them like P-3's.

HTH

Spongebob

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Great info guys thanks. I was aware of the grey in USAF and the camo cover that Marine crews use, although wasn't entirely sure they still did.

So spongebob let me ask you this, other than the amount of color which you have already cleard up, I'm guessing that each squadron regulates what goes on the helmet correct? I guess what I'm trying to ask is, are individual crewmembers allowed to do their own thing or is there a set desgin?

It's by squadron.

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I saw two ways they did it. One was they would use diferent colors of tape to make the squadron design or they would paint it over the white. It depended on squadron.

It's by squadron.
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I saw two ways they did it. One was they would use diferent colors of tape to make the squadron design or they would paint it over the white. It depended on squadron.

I haven't seen any helmets painted in the 9 years I've been playing. It's all been tape... probably because it's the most practical way to get the brain buckets reflective.

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Well, I have got my old helmet from when I was in the training squadron, VS-27. It is white with two angled, thick, yellow, black bordered stripes.

Incidentally, when I first got to the Scouts in 1982, a few of the guys had solid gold painted helmets. But they had just come out with that reflective tape rule, and some guys had all yellow refective tape jobs replacing the gold. Then the 80% white rule came out, and we did all white with red chevrons. I thing we got the chevron idea from VF-84,as they had yellow helmets with black chevrons, IIRC. VF-41 had all red helmets, BTW. I'll have to look at my old cruise books.

I also remember us thinking it was so cool when the Hornet squadrons first embarked (15 and 87) and they had the new gray, high tech, low profile lightweight helmet with the gold reflective visors and leather visor covers.

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ahhhhhh yes.....the helmet that was famous for saying "you could have had him man, you could have had him!"

any takers on the scene trivia?

Bill

Ah, come one, thats an easy one. Maverick is walking down the flightline with his new RIO in the Sundowners helmet, shortly after Goose died.

-Hoops

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"you could have had him man" is not one of the four things an NFO is allowed to say to a pilot:

Best move I ever saw

Bingo fuel

We're on fire

Dude, I want the fat one

Spongebob

Keep it up Stick Monkey! By the way, that last comment will cost you the first round if you ever get down here from Pax.

-Sunshine

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"you could have had him man" is not one of the four things an NFO is allowed to say to a pilot:

Best move I ever saw

Bingo fuel

We're on fire

Dude, I want the fat one

Spongebob

:thumbsup: Excellent one. :lol:

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"you could have had him man" is not one of the four things an NFO is allowed to say to a pilot:

Best move I ever saw

Bingo fuel

We're on fire

Dude, I want the fat one

Spongebob

;)

"Hammer 14, You're Dead."

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So Karl do you or any one you know have pics of a decorated flight helmet? I know this seems like a trivial thing in the greater scope of things but its something I like to include in my models if I can...

Evidently I never went out of my way to take pictures of the brain bucket. A few folks with people wearing them, but not many that show off how we had it taped. This is actually about as good as I have (from Thanksgiving Day 2003):

turkeyday.jpg

Squadron colors were black and white with a checkerboard thing going on (speedbrakes of 500 were checkerboarded in black and white, and below the football on the tail was a band of checkerboard - black and white on 500, gray and, well, darker gray on 501-503). So the helmet decoration was black/white checkerboard down the center, like the VF-24 pictures above but smaller. You can see the stripe starting just above the visors. Hard to make out from this distance that it's checkerboard.

Edited by Karl Sander
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