The mask consists of a silicone rubber facepiece (made in small, medium, and large sizes) with an in-turned peripheral face seal, binocular rigid eye lens system and elastic head harness. The improvements include a quick-doff hood, second skin, voice amplification (M7), revised nosecup, two new carriers, and improved vision correction. Pre-Planned Product Improvement (P3I) Programs developed the M40A1 (1992) and M40A2 configurations of the M40 Gas Mask. Army and Marine Corps are the primary users of the M40 Gas Mask, with selective use by other services. The closely related M42 Combat Vehicle Crewman Mask is used by soldiers mounted in vehicles. The M40 is the mask issued to dismounted soldiers. The size is written both on the bottom of the intake piece of the mask and on the middle piece of the box that holds the mask in place.Marines assigned to 2nd Battalion, 25th Marines, performing a head shaking maneuver to ensure that their M40A1 Gas Masks are properly fitted during Nuclear, Biological, Chemical (NBC) training, Camp Fuji, Japan, 16 July 2004.įield Protective Mask, M40 provides respiratory, eye and face protection against chemical and biological agents, radioactive fallout particles, and battlefield contaminants. The mask was produced in four sizes: K (Kinder - Children), F (Frauen - Women), M (Männer - Men) and M-Ue (Männer-Übergrösse - Men-Oversize), with the M-Ue size (presumably) only being produced when specifically ordered, as this was the case with the VM37. The base of the valve is reinforced with steel to make it sturdier, and to aid with putting it on or taking it off. The exhale valve is a simple flapper valve, similar to the ones of various other civilian gas masks of the era. Like all VMs, it uses a simple metal 40mm intake piece with a green rubbered inhale valve and a foam-like ring that helped drying the intake piece from sweat and condensation.
Earlier units of the mask were manufactured with a rubber harness, while later ones featured a cloth harness to further reduce the manufacturing cost. It has a very unique type of harness, it uses three straps attached with two metal tightening brackets to the rubber or cloth straps attached to the mask itself. To counteract this, the VM40 uses a simple strap and shaped chin rest to provide a tight seal to the user, making it a full-face protective mask. The inserts feature a print indicating the manufacturer (Auer), a number (likely the production year) and the word 'Innenseite' (inside) to show which way to insert them.ĭue to the rubber crisis that Germany faced during the war, helmet-style masks like the VM37 became too costly to produce. The mask came with replaceable anti-fog lens inserts that were fixed into the eye pieces with a simple snap ring. The eye lenses of the VM40 tend to discolour overtime becoming more yellow or red, like other gas masks with cellulose eye pieces from the same period. The VM40's face piece was made from Buna-S (styrene-butadiene rubber, a synthetic rubber still used and produced to this day) and was colored either dark green or black, with the production stamps located on the lower left and right side of the face piece where the chin would rest when worn.
The VM40 is a Second World War civil defense gas mask available for civilians in Nazi Germany. Reichsluftschutzbund (Nazi pre-Civil Defence )
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