Neither Hollywood 'hype' nor absolutely necessary. As long as you don't touch the wire with your hand as you contact boat, ship or land, the static discharges down the outside of your immersion suit ... unless you are still externally very wet. However, I did, once, get a real eye-watering belt touching down on a Marine Craft pinnace ... between my tooth fillings!!
It took some time for the sort of ozone residue to clear the tonsils.
In the mid 60's RAE Farnborough did some trials with us to measure the charge levels we were dealing with - this was on Whirlwinds. They took their gear on the marine craft and used a volt/ammeter in series with an earthing 'prod' to check us each time we came on board. From memory, the figures were something like 175,000 plus volts but very little ampereage. That was the maximum on the initial touch down but it built up quite quickly again. Happy days
