In many of the WWII crew photographs you will see certain crew members of the group wearing a rather odd-looking belt around their waist, such as highlighted in the photograph below. These “belts” are M26 life preservers. Crew members were required to wear their life preserver whenever they were “on-duty” or “on-watch.”

Correct position was at chest-level and around under the arm pits, however the belts rarely stayed up at chest level and were more comfortably worn at the waist. However, inflating the belt at waist-level put the wearer at greater risk of drowning.

Apparently the CO2 canisters were easy to set off, and many of the crew would take the canisters out of their belt so that they wouldn’t be victim of pranksters and “accidental” inflation. The belts could still be manually inflated by blowing up the two bladders via two long black tubes.

Here is a link at WarRelics.eu with additional information, and a close-up view of these life belts.