Douggie M has talked briefly about operating with the Senior Service. This pic shows one of the types of waterproof container that we used to use. There were others. My first drop to a ship was in XV 190 in September 1973 to HMS Kent. As none of us were at all competent in ship recognition we had pics from 'Janes All The Worlds Ships' . It would be bad for the image if we presented the package to the inevitable shadowing Russian 'trawler'.
A task force like that in Op Corporate had an air defence cordon around it. Entry and exit was by 'gates ' whose position etc changed regularly around the clock. So did the appropriate codes. Sometimes in the words of that Barclaycard commercial 'we were all fluent, sadly in different languages' !
Our time and that of the RN could get out of sync and so could the comms.
When that happened the Herc crews would get fed up and threaten to take the kit home. This generally worked but the 'sparkling' on te CCWR as the fleet AD radars tracked you could be disconcerting. I am sure DM and others could tell some interesting tales.