"The Caine Mutiny" -- a couple of questions

Cafe Society
1

I’m about halfway through the movie and wanted to pop off a couple questions before I forget.

  1. When The Caine is escorting the Marines, everyone smears white gunk on their faces. What’s that about?

  2. On Admiral Halsey’s ship, some of the personnel are wearing outfits in red, yellow, green and blue with cunning matching hats. What’s up with the outfits?

2

Going strictly from memory and a small familiarity with the military of the time:

  1. Anti-flash cream

  2. The suits designate flight-deck duties or other such specialized endeavours. Red for firefighters, yellow for deck crew, blue for flight ops, etc. (The colors I just pulled out of my ass.)

3

What is anti-flash cream?

4

Anti-flash cream was a protectant, not unlike zinc oxide, designed to protect the skin from gun flash, explosion and the like.

5

Don’t know about WWII, but here are the current colours (jersey/helmet):

Blue/blue: Aircraft handlers
Blue/white: Aircraft elevator operators and phone talkers
Blue/yellow: Aircraft directors
Yellow/yellow: Aircraft handling officers
Yellow/green: Catapult and arresting gear officers
Green/green: Catapult and arresting gear crew, Airwing maintenance, photographer’s mates
Green/yellow: Catapult and arresting gear officers
Green/white: Cargo handling personnel, helicopter landing signal enlisted personnel
Green/brown: Air wing quality control personnel
White/(none): Landing Signal Officer (LSO)
White/white: Air transfer officers, medical personnel, visitors
White/green: Squadron plane inspectors, LOX crews
Brown/brown: Air Wing Plane Captains, Air Wing Line Leading Petty Officers
Brown/red: Air wing helicopter captains
Purple/purple: Aviation fuels
Red/red: Ordnance, crash crews, explosive ordnance disposal

6

“Caine Mutiny” is one of my favorite movies and has one Hell of a performance from Jose Ferrer.

Anyway, now that the OP has been answered here’s a question:
How did the 3 officers of the Caine get permission from Captain Queag to travel to Admiral Halsey’s ship? (Did they just “sneak out” when he wasn’t looking? :smiley: ) That part always made me wonder.