Blue Flashlights in the Jungle

Yes, that Cresson H. Kearny, from Nuclear War Survival Skills. From his Jungle Snafus ... and Remedies.

Within two days after Pearl Harbor, the headlights of all U.S. Army vehicles in the Canal Zone and Panama were painted opaque black except for a horizontal translucent red stripe painted across each lens. The leading protester against red blackout lights was a reserve officer, an experienced railroad man. He knew that red lights are used to warn of danger because a red light can be seen farther away than an equal-candlepower light of any other color. or white.

The first Jungle Platoon had found that small flashlights with blue cellophane film over their lenses provided enough light even on the blackest nights to enable men to cut nails. And especially in jungle a blue light, similar to the bluish lights given off by rotting wood and some tropical insects, attracts much less attention than a red light.

To help eliminate red headlights, I presented pertinent facts to the three officers charged with resolving the blackout headlights controversy. They had not realized that the daytime sky looks blue because the blue wavelength component of sunlight is scattered the most by molecules and particles in the air and that red light, having the longest wavelength in the visible spectrum, is scattered least and can be seen farthest away. Within a few days the red stripes had been scraped off the headlights of Army vehicles in Panama and replaced with translucent, thin, light blue paint.

Lightweight blackout flashlights with blue lenses were issued to many of our jungle troops during World War II, beginning several months after Pearl Harbor. They had a small bulb and a single D cell, good for many hours. In The Marauders, Charlton Ogburn Jr's classic on the climax of the Burma campaigns, on page 172 I was pleased to read, "We were careful to display the blue gleam of a blackout flashlight...." Yet by the time Americans had begun fighting in Vietnam, many military flashlights were provided with red lenses, and none with blue. The enemy can see a red light much farther away than a blue one of equal candlepower.

Today blue blackout flashlights are long forgotten. Now some of our jungle troops can use a book-sized receiver to look up at a Global Positioning Satellite and immediately team within a few meters where they are on a map. A red light seldom will be needed to read maps while preventing temporary loss of good night vision. Except for a few leaders. American jungle soldiers will need only blue-light flashlights. With blue lights they can move at night without as much risk of getting shot as when using flashlights emit-ting a more easily seen red or white light.

Furthermore, at night a jungle soldier with a small blue-light flashlight shielded by his poncho usually can safely doctor his cuts and scratches and remove ticks and thorns. Many American jungle fighting men were thus enabled to help themselves keep healthy during World War II. Unfortunately, our Services' concentration on getting ready to fight the Russians in Europe or the Middle East led to the elimination of blue-light flashlights and most other combat-proven jungle equipment.