Peter,
I just found the following on the "Rum Rations" forums
>>Courtesy and © Rick Jolly OBE, Surgeon Captain RN (ret'd.)
Original nickname for any member of the of the Royal Air Force following the the Service's formation on April 01st (no joke) 1918, by an enforced marriage bewtween the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps.
The colour of RAF uniforms is supposed to have resulted in the diversion of a huge but cancelled export order of the Tsar's Imperial Guard, following the previous year's Revolution in Russia.
The light-blue colour was identical to the greasy mercuric oxide jelly (or crabfat) which was widely issued (to ratings - 'Jack' - in the Royal Navy, or 'Andrew') at the time for the treatment of pevlic 'body lice' - crabs (or 'a dose').
The descriptive term for the RAF as Crabfats is still widely used by senior Naval aviators (and just about every other branch of the UK's armed forces), although now usually abbreviated to merely 'Crabs' in common usage.
Note special use of 'Crimson Crabs' to denote The Red Arrows flying team.
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:redface: