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I'm talking about those green plastic things with the angle head and the clip built onto it. The last one I pitched into the S-can was marked "MX 991-U."
I don't know how many of these I've had come my way over the years, back to and including my active duty time. To date, I've never had one that worked very long, if at all. I've taken them apart and dinged around with the obvious to get good contact but the problem always seemed to point to the switch. Which is riveted in and difficult to access.
I've had a few of the navy gray GI flashlights (MX 993-U) with the straight barrel and these all seemed to work. A friend of mine who worked at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard gave me one years ago that lasted a very long time. Another friend even used it as a back marker light on his motorcycle for a while when the regular lights didn't work.
My hope is that GI's in service now have better lights. How much trouble is it to go out and buy Mag-lites off the shelf that work well and last long? There are several Mag-lites around here and they never give me trouble. I've also got a Chinese-made Nex-Tech aluminum flashlight with LED bulb; so far, very good. My Snap-On flashlight is pretty good. The sleeper is a cheap Coleman Night Sight that is one of my favorites.
When aluminum flashlights were making their debut in the early 1970's, Kel-Lite was a major name being sold to the police. They later succumbed to Mag-Lite. Those things are highly collectible now - flashlight collectors? Who knew? I bought one in 1972, a five D cell model that saw a lot of use, then got lost behind a washing machine for about 10 years. I found it when I moved but by that time, I'd replaced it with a Mag-Lite. About five years ago, I sold the Kel-Lite on eBay for very good money. After that, I ran across a few more Kel-Lites at garage sales and those did well too.
It was during this time that I learned about flashlight collectors. Some of them have hundreds of pieces (they usually don't cost as much per unit as guns). A sub-set of this activity is lighting equipment used by the cops.
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