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Firefighters’ helmet (Casque de Sapeurs-Pompiers) from the French commune of Altkirch, located in the Haut-Rhin department, in the Alsace region.
Model 1933 helmet.
At the beginning of the 1930s, firefighters and military personnel expressed the need for a more protective helmet than the 1895 model that had been issued to them. The French Army had just updated the 1915 Adrian helmet to the 1926 model, which was more robust, manufactured in a single piece and fitted with a crest and an insignia plate.
In fact, in 1931, Colonel Pouderoux, who commanded the Paris Fire Brigade (from 1925 to 1933), initiated a study on this subject, carried out by the company Bernard Franck et Fils, which had previously supplied the 1895 model. Bernard Franck & Fils relied heavily on the research conducted for the military helmet in 1915 and, as early as January 1932, proposed a new model, similar to the general-issue Adrian helmet of the army and four times more resistant than the 1895 model.
The 1933 model remained in service until the mid-1980s, after more than 60 years, with firefighters of the major fire brigades, but it continued to be used until 1995 in rural municipalities. Even so, it was never completely withdrawn, as it remains today the traditional firefighter helmet.
