Blacksheep, was that serious?
All the maritime aircraft had a flare pistol for search and rescue. We carried an additional 210 greens on a SAROP. Firing a green every 20 miles at night - about 12 per hour - we could have fired greens for getting on for twice our search endurance.
One dark and stormy night we put it to the test. Instant fail. The theory had clearly been set up for an open ocean search for a downed aircraft and not for a storm tossed fishing boat in sh*t.
The visibility was about 2 miles so one green every 20 was not going to work. Given a 2 mile viz we then found that we could not look out for about 20-30 seconds after the flare ignited else we would lose our night sight. Mmmm, back to the drawing board.
That was the problem with legacy kit and tactics imported from WW2.