Interesting rule of thumb used by Norman Howard, Bomber Command Ops 1, who wrote all the routes.
He told me after I had submitted some fuel planning figures calculated by an incompetent or uncaring copilot. Thereafter I checked every flight plan for arithmetic errors and fuel pigs, one typical one was to 'use' the 7,000lb weight of YS2 as fuel. Yes, true.
The ROT was to take the leg length from departure to Top of Drop, typically 800 miles. Then three times the distance from Top of drop to bottom of climb, say 300 x 3. Then use the distance from BOC to overhead the recovery airfield, say 800. This gave a total distance of, in this case 2,500 miles. Then look at the fuel used for a level flight of 2,500 miles at range cruise which would give a fuel burn of about 55,000lbs therefore fuel o/h recovery would be 17,000lbs.
For my favourite target the figures were 700, 900, 600 which gave a total of 4,000 miles. The putative flight time would be 8 hr 20 min thus we needed the full double drum fit of 88k and would have just 5k left at the end.
While on flight planning for war missions, another thing occurs. The primary mission crew would draw up a flight plan for the start of the war plan on 1 July. The QRA targets however needed four flight plans. We were provided with sets of statistical met so a new flight plan was available for each quarter. If time permitted, the Met Office would provide updated met data but they were never permitted to know the route or area for the forecast! They had to provide met for the whole of western Russia.
Another met curiosity was the Climatological Data Sheet. This was a confidential document provided by JARIC with the climatological data for 100 different regions and each season. By refering to the CDS, the well prepared crew knew whether to pack shorts or mukluks.
Alamo,
One time Vulcan driver and latter Ottawa taxi driver, Harvey Moore got the 0800 slot at Waddo. He did not need the sortie for any stats but the aircraft was serviceable so fly he had to.
He announced that they would be flying for endurance and expected to return about 1500. Oh yeah was the general response. Off Harvey went and air plans assigned the aircraft to the 1500 slot for the next sortie. Come 1300 ops were still taking ops normals when air plans came in "Where was Harvey". Don't know was the reply but according to his flight plan, not far from Bodo. Every few minutes an increasingly anxious planner kept coming in and the prospects for the 1500 launch looked increasingly unlikely. At 1500, true to his word, Harvey checked in, joined the instrument pattern for an approach then into visuals to burn off down to 8,000. 7 hr 15 min. He got roaster by the air planner when he landed which might explain why he became a taxi driver.