Elsewhere someone says the white gunk the sailors put on their faces before escorting the Marine landing is to protect them from their gun shooting. This sounds good to me except I have never seen or heard of it anywhere else in my entire life. Everyone on the ship seems to have put it on, even the bridge officers. Is/was this cream common on Navy ships?
shareI'm curious too. My Dad was a Higgins boat Coxswain and I'd ask him but he passed on in 2006. I remember he enjoyed the movie and would always tell us, his sons, what was bogus in a movie. He ever said anything about the white gunk. Would like to ask him now.
shareCertainly in WWII it was common, but I haven't a clue whether it's still in use.
The thing I find funny is that so many are finding it hard to believe it was ever actually used because they've never seen it before in movies.
While it HAS turned up in some other films - check out the 2-3 others threads here on exactly the same subject for some examples - it seems folks don't realize that movies are MOVIES! After all, in MOST cop movies the cops draw their weapons and engage in fire fights almost daily. DNA tests take less than a day to provide a "100 percent match!" and every black cop was born in South Central. In "Hollywood" movies we learn that every film studio has extras dressed as Roman Soldiers and Vegas showgirls wandering the backlot, and in romantic comedies, NOBODY has STDs.
Yes, in the Pacific during WWII, a naval crew headed into battle applied anti-flash cream.
I read a lot of military history, and I've never come across references to anti-flash cream.
One thing to remember about this film is that it was a)Made just nine years after the war had ended, so there would be countless veterans around to advise them on it.
As well, it was based on a book by a naval veteran who presumably was trying to achieve accuracy in the battle scenes.
It's possible that it was only done on smaller ships such as destroyers, while on larger vessels (such as battleships) it might not have been needed. I don't know.
One thing I did notice was how there was no consistency in how it was applied. Some officers and crewmen covered their whole faces with it. Others just applied it over the top part of their faces. In the book, Wilie is described as putting it over the exposed skin of his face, neck and backs of his hands.
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How close were their faces to the gun fire that they needed this cream?
shareFlash does not refer to your own gunfire. Sure, if you are in the open on deck anywhere near really big guns like on a battleship, you are going to get the daylights knocked out of you due to the shock wave, and you stand to be badly hurt or killed. But flash is a phenomenon of explosion in a confined space, usually of incoming shellfire, but it can be from a terrible accident, like the Iowa in 1989. The powder being loaded into a gun ignited while the breech was still open, and a hell of flame instantly (faster than the blink of an eye) swept the confines of the turret and killed everyone in it - 47 men.
The fireball travels at three times the speed of sound and is at a temperature of over 2000 degrees F.
If the flash was not that bad, zinc oxide anti flash cream could be effective in preventing flash burns to exposed skin.
Glad I read all the posts before responding. Your post explains it well. Typically zinc-oxide was used by Gunners Mates mostly unless it was very likely a crew would be receiving incoming HE rounds. It would be reasonable to expect Japanese Artillery fire on a destroyer escorting landing craft toward the beach. The guys in the gun turrets were sitting on a literal powderkeg.
Remember Rabbit Ears with tin foil?