Mines, MRE, or leaflets
AA62 and Bts70,
I don't recall any clearances to drop mines in my time. I did see what looked like a big blue torpedo described to me as a mine in 47AD Trg Wg. It did have the shackle welded on as AA62 describes - I believed it to be just an artefact belonging to a museum. Not sure if it ever got moved from LYN to BZN.
I do remember attempts to resurrect a role fit with shed loads of rollers which covered the floor all the way to 245. Certainly an ankle breaker. This was developed by JATE sometime in the 90s for free dropping tri-wall boxes containing pouched meals for HUMAID and had also been proposed for dropping Psyops leaflets when the need arose sometime in the early 2000s. It never made it into the RTS on a permanent basis but was held to be issued against any SD where the old JATE report would be dusted down and issued as the authority. (I think they still call them CLEs in new money). However I very much doubt if it would have been signed up in this day and age.
All the rollers were required to support the floppy bottoms of the cardboard boxes. If I recall they were restrained with 1200 lb cord. Cord may have been used to lace up the boxes and tied off to a floor point or anchor cable which when ejected opened the boxes scattering the contents in the breeze. Hence no wood could be used for fear of harming the recipients. Restraint was virtually non existent as it would have been dangerous if not impossible to access over all those rollers to remove it.
We could not do this with the J Roller system. probably another capability we no longer have. Just goes to show the versatility of Skydel. I don't even know if we had clearances for free dropping at all even with CDS baseboards from the J. (no reason why we should not have though)
I used to like doing a bit of hands on and even assisted in an inflight roll change during a transit from AD role to Para along the lines described by AA62 and Bts 70. I still curse AML for all those damn drop nose pins. I know there was thousands of them in the role equipment bay but, FFS they could have done with a squirt of PX 24 and a little attention. the problem was only compounded by bashing them with the only handy thing on the aircraft.- The QR Chain tensioners!