It all reminds me of the small amount of practice in 'ditching procedures' we had as a crew preparing us in case we had to ditch a Lancaster. Designated positions were allocated to each member of the crew, and landing on calm water must have made an enormous difference to landing on the sea, each crew member had a duty. I think the flight engineer had to pull the release to expose the rubber dinghy stowed in the starboard wing, crew jumped into the sea on that side, each scrambled in and helped others, wop took over the manually operated radio which transmitted the distress message and the rope was cut to detach the dinghy from the aircraft. One or two practices were carried out in nearby swimming pools.