A problem with sortie planning, especially at Cottesmore was the aircraft fit would drive the sortie plan often causing a complete replan after a late aircraft change. A full 'standard ' training sortie with high and low level navigation and bombing might suddenly have to be changed to accommodate a mandatory ECM monitor run at 112AT Stornaway. As this was essential to the operational mission it overrode everything else. Or the aircraft might be loaded with 100lb Practice Bombs and a mandatory T4 bombsight calibration sortie, again secondary operational necessity. Worse was being given a fatigue limited aircraft necessitating cancellation of a planned low level trip.
With the change to low level operations aircraft fatigue became a major problem. Fatigue management centred around controlling fatigue life consumption until the next major service. Fatigue meters were fitted in the rear cockpit and G readings recorded after every flight. From memory any G was clicked off against letters A to H on the meter. A was a very small amount of G and could click up quite merrily. For G you might not even get one count in a sortie. I remember one flight over a Greek island where we hit a standing wave and there was a real crunch. We clocked an H count or two and I think the aircraft had to be checked out.