Ah, this is what I had in mind! Well done Nugget90, you have reminded me of a mass briefing for Exercise Tense Caper (no other was so well named). This was the culmination of para and stores drop training that gradually involved more aircraft throughout the summer. By Autumn it became three night streams of Argosies, Beverleys, and Hastings (we know a song about that, don't we boys and girls?) but not necessarily in that order, Sunshine! Poor weather had meant the repeated postponement of previous attempts of the mass formation drop, and tonight was the final opportunity left. The forecaster, who had put the kibosh on all the previous briefings was told that, thanks, but his presence was not required for this one. Instead a Gp. Capt. from Command intoned the night's forecast, which by eery coincidence was close to but very marginally better than the weather minima required. So, that night at Colerne the dozen or so Hastings taxied out to the holding point, turned into wind to perform their power checks before getting clearance to enter the runway in turn. Things didn't look at all promising; low stratus and rain with less than optimum viz. However, the first three thundered off into the night, the fourth entered in turn ready to go when the Stream Commander in the lead a/c scattered his trio and cancelled further take-offs. Sighs of relief from us (we were number 6 or so), taxy back to dispersal via the runway, shut down, and back to our respective messes. Eventually those who had at least something to enter in their logbooks joined us in the bar. Where did you go? "We filed an airborne Flight Plan, joined airways and flew around in controlled airspace until we felt it safe to return". How about you? "We simply held overhead Bath (a prohibited area!) and orbited there". Third crew, "At what altitude?". "2,500', why?" Long pause...."Which way round were you going?" .
Having no Botticelli inspired forgers amongst us, completion of the Airmet Form (RAF F....?) usually required on our Hastings the combined efforts of the Navs (all the boring numbers about position and time, and ETA next position, etc) on one side and corresponding columns overleaf for drawing the clouds below, at your level, and above, which we co-pilots completed. This was then passed to the Sig for bashing out on HF, or VHF if in range. At the end of the trip the completed form would be handed in to Met in a debrief. Thus it was that my masterpiece (there were those who used different coloured pencils for defining better the layered clouds, vertical extent, precipitation, etc but I felt that was all a bit gauche myself) was handed over to the Gan Forecaster. He graciously accepted it but simply placed it on his desk rather than using it to grill us further in order to better comprehend our en-route weather. The Captain queried this by asking if a previous aircraft had recently flown the same route. It hadn't but he now had these, and with a flourish produced time sequenced photographs taken from space of the area we had just flown through. The Red Hot Heat of technology was fast overtaking us, satellites were here, and soon the pencils and crayons were to become redundant.