AA62 "Waterproof" 1 Ton
Back to 82 Folks
The fleet on its way south discovered a lot of things were left behind or were being used up too quickly so the Drops to Ships page in MOTS ll was rewritten. Once the usual inter service comms cock up was resolved; e.g. "British Warship on my starboard side...." followed by the BAM code fiasco; "Yeoman, make signal to Hercules..." The snag was that the container when dropped floated flush with the surface and was invisible from the ship. The Wasp was launched and being lighter than the load could only hover over it till the whaler was launched to tow the load to the ship. On winching it aboard the soggy bottom often fell out consigning the V&A contents to Davy Jones.
Enter the JATE team. The 1 ton Waterproof load was only coated tri wall cardboard which kept the sogginess at bay for a few hours. A SARBE beacon was applied to the top for the Wasp to locate the load in high seas using its centre reader, and a Flacon beacon was attached for visual ident.
The SARBE and Flacon were activated prior to the drop so it was "blinding Rodney" on the ramp.
Epilogue. The Navy still took several hours to retrieve the load from the sea and several more contents were lost to Davy Jones.
Hope that explains.