Who was Kelley/Kelly ? as in the American name for that helmet

Why was the M1917 helmet called a Kelly or Kelley helmet ?
Was it named after a person, if so who was he/she?
Us Brits dont call it that , it's an American name so please explain.

cheers.

 

It seems I remember something about it being attributed to the General who proposed or adopted the design.
Another snipit I have rattling around my brain is the color of the original 400,000 helmets which were bought directly from Great Britain being a different color.

 

I tried my google-fu on this yesterday. Apparently, the "Kelly" designation belongs to the newer design of the 1930's, before that it was the Brodie helmet. The only difference between the two was a different kind of liner.

I couldn't find out who Kelly was, but he must have designed the new liner.

 

Yeah noticed that it was the newer helmet only called that.
I had a Google on the M1917A1 maybe it is something to do with the new liner.

 

Saw this about paint colours or did you mean back in WW1 ?
http://www.ww2gyrene.org/equipment_helmet.htm

 

WW1-ish....the US helmets had a different color of green than the Brit helmets. The liner issue is ringing a couple of bells though.
I found a 1917 at the landfill one day and I poked around quite a bit on the interweb about it, it was a while ago and everything thing seems jumbled together now.

It seems I also remember hearing a story about an order changing the reference of the color from "Limey Green" to "Kelly Green" so as to not offend the Brits. but, like I said, it was long ago.