Interesting story about the green bulbs. Someone on HIGH, decided that the white bulb, (this same bulb has been in use, since the late 60's, for power generation control panels) was not tactical. "We got to be tactical", was the new buzz word. This was in the early 90's. So the call went out, and a company that shall remain un named, bid on the contract, and won. The smart guys there simply used the same white bulb, and put some kind of green covering on it. And charged almost 9 bucks a shot for it. The white bulbs cost .25 cents. Nice profit margin. Well, a bazillion bulbs were recolored, and shipped off the the military. Not long after screwing one in, the green covering simply fell off. It got worse. About a year after the military took the first order, the bulbs started to peal in the boxes. Order one, at last get it in, and the green covering had already fallen off into the box. At the time, we were getting hammered by NATO inspection teams badly. These weasels looked for the smallest gigs to write up. Typical Germans.
One of my soldiers, a fellow who we called John Boy, who was good for floor sweeping, and such high speed jobs, was cleaning the shop floor, while I was talking in a loud voice to an inspector, in German. My young soldier went home at the end of the day, like always. Big smile on his face. No one saw him unscrew every panel light, on every gen set, as well as putting every white light bulb he could find, in his rucksack. Next morning, he said, "Look Chief, I got the lights green!" I felt like choking him. I told him we had already tried magic markers, ink pens, dyes and every other thing we could think of. Nothing worked. He screwed all the light bulbs back in, and turned them on. Then went back to being Joe the Janitor. Several days later, I noticed him walking around the gen sets we had running 24/7. Lights all on, and green!! I walked over, and looked. Green. All of them. Every one. 21 green lights!! So I looked every day, the whole week. Green. So I went looking for John Boy. He was cleaning a gen set. I asked him, just what the Hel* he had done to the lights. He looked a bit worried, and asked if he had done something wrong. I assured him just the opposite! How had he got the lights to stay green? Well, he laughed, and told me he used German Easter Egg dye on them. I almost passed out from laughing.