Wednesday, December 7, 2016

WWII Cream Protective Flashburn Iwo Jima Marines

For those that study The Battle of Iwo Jima or have a passing interest in Marine battles of WWII, you might have seen photos of Marines with what appears to be white cream applied to their faces. After a few years of searching a very rewarding thread appeared on FB that answered a few questions. While I was familiar with the usage of Anti-Flash cream at Iwo Jima I was not exactly sure what kind of containers were used to distribute the cream to Marines. A little background, it was believed at the time that the Japanese on Iwo Jima had buried barrels of explosives on the beach and the anti flash cream was worn by Marines in the first landing wave to protective themselves from the flash of the detonations of the buried barrels. It appears that the anti-flash cream, Cream, Protective Flashburn, was distributed to Marines in tubes of cream in small cardboard boxes. These have a "S1" stock number which was used during WWII by the US Navy. A second type was produced in a small tin with a screw on cap, but not exactly sure when they were issued as they have no stock number to date it. Still a lot of research needs to be done to confirm that this indeed is how the anti-flash cream was distributed to the Marines, it's one step closer in securing the full story on this obscure piece of Marine gear. Thank you Eric Oehlberg, Howard Smith
Update 1/19: These Flashburn tins were listed recently, which appear to be the tins above but with the wrapper with the contract date of 1952. This should solve the mystery of when the tins above were produced.

2 comments:

  1. I have found recently a video on youtube in full color of the Iwo Jima landings.
    At the 3:07 mark you can clearly see a loader passing a shell onboard covered fully in this cream.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwVP9nL_mfE

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  2. I have seen a photo of this flash cream on Peleliu. So my theory is that they were produced in early 1944 but were issued in only small numbers until Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

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