WWII German Helmet Markings

Many of you have probably seen these German helmet decals on eBay, and wondered as I did, if they could be used for 1/72 scale figures.

The sheet contains 130 decals including helmet markings for Heer, SS, and Luftwaffe. There are also some decals for what look like Heer breast patches as well.

There are three different sizes for the German helmet sheet, putatively listed as 15mm, 20mm, and 25mm. However from the image used in the eBay listing, the 15mm markings looked oversized when used on 15mm figures to my eye.

Still, I decided to buy a set of the 15mm decals to see how they would look on 1/72 miniatures, since they were definitely too big for 15mm figures.

When I received the decals, I took a look at them under the magnifying glass. The blacks and whites are decently printed for the size, but the red coverage for the Nazi Party decals and National Tricolor decals is not complete, and can be seen as alternating red and white spots.

I didn't do a very good job on the decal application for this post, because someone gave my thumb a good bashing during kendo practice, so my hands were not really good for detail work today. So take note that the decals can look much better than in these pictures. I botched the trimming when I was cutting out the decals and tore the SS Runic Shield. There's probably some extra transparent film that was stuck on the decals as well.


What I did notice though, was that the white for the Nazi Party decals looked out of register on one side, and more importantly, the markings are definitely too large for 1/72 scale figures. The actual size of the decals relative to the helmet can be seen at German-Helmets.com.

To try and fix these problems, I painted out the white areas with black paint. In fact, I used the paint to reduce the area of the decals as well. Looks better, no?


The next time I apply these decals, I will cut them out using my dissecting microscope, and use decal setting solution to make sure they are nice and flat.