Except that there have now come to light some staggering espionage recovery missions eg Project Coldfeet which ransacked a soviet ice station, Project Ivy Bells to recover the missiles and stuff from soviet missile tests, and Project Azorian to raise a sunk soviet submarine. There was even a Project Barmaid (are all British code names better?) that had a claw fitted to HMS Conquerer to sever and capture the towed sonar array from a soviet submarine while it was underway!
I’m not pretending any of this is likely in this case; I’m just giving us fun things to google and start reading about :)
Don’t know, but they had the brilliantly named “Operation Hope Not”, preparations for the funeral of Winston Churchill. It started in 1953; he died in 1965 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hope_Not)
There also is “Operation London Bridge”, a plan that has been updated for over half a century, for when queen Elizabeth II dies (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens...). That will be a momentous event because because she’s the queen of a very large part of the world (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the United Kingdom and various smaller islands), and because most of the population of Britain wasn’t born when her predecessor died (making it a rare event)
I’m not pretending any of this is likely in this case; I’m just giving us fun things to google and start reading about :)