I had left Marham before the rush down South started; however, I was still concerned with the Victor from HQSTC and then HQ 1 Gp. My recollection is that the Victors were really severely caned during operations from the Island. True, there was little if any circuit bashing, but nearly all take-offs were at max TO weight, the aircraft were refuelled in the air to a higher weight - the max airborne AUW - and the aircraft spent long periods "in contact" receiving fuel.
The Victor had a very flexible wing and the life of the airframe was determined by the progressive weakening of the wing root structure through continual positive and negative bending load cycles. To measure these cycles, the aircraft were all fitted with fatigue meters. These recorded the number of times in a flight when certain "G" parameters were exceeded. I cannot remember the figures, but they would be something like: -.5, -.4, -.3 -.2, -.1 then +.1, +.2 ..... +.9, +1 (eg 2g on the cockpit meter) The counts for each g excursion were shown in windows on the meter in the bomb bay - each window having a letter to identify it. The readings at the start of a sortie were recorded, and then again after landing. After subtracting the starting figures, you could get a g loading profile for the sortie eg A 0, B 2, C 9, D 87, E 236, F 198, G 107 and so on. On calm days doing a navigation exercise, the figures would be low; on a bumpy day doing receiver training or long periods in contact refuelling, the figures could be very high. Regardless, the figures could be entered into a formula, and the proportion of "Fatigue Index (FI)" units consumed on a sortie calculated. This might be as low as 0.1 units for example, or much higher. The K 2s entered service with a life of 100 FI, and I believe after some further modifications, it was raised to 125 FI, or even higher. Perhaps someone out there knows the actual figures.
However, meter reading figures were factored in the formula taking into account the take off weight, landing weight, maximum airborne AUW (from fuel received), time spent receiving fuel, and sortie pattern. As you can imagine, the pattern of South Atlantic operations would have resulted in the fatigue units consumed being heavily factored to a level very much higher than in routine operations. Thus, the Victors lost a large chunk of their fleet fatigue life, and measures such as the aileron upset increase were introduced to allow the fleet to continue operations until 1993 when all AAR responsibilities were passed to the VC 10s and Tristars.
Hope that covers the subject!!
By the way, the "Victor Cockpit Visibility" thread makes interesting reading if you have not seen it.
Bob