Brain Potter, you're right. If anyone had requested a M0.9 cruise, permission would have been refused. So they cruised at whatever it would do without asking.....
Don't even ask about the AAR brackets! I did the first; once they were in contact we increased the IAS to whatever they could cope with. Once complete, we climbed and turned out of their way back to Akrotiri; they thundered on across Egypt. I later discovered that their Air Eng had 'filled to full', putting the aircraft a long way outside the normal envelope....
They roared onwards to the TriStar bracket over the Indian Ocean and went pedal to the metal all the way to Oz. God knows how much fatigue was used for the record; as an Air Wheel later said "No doubt a few limits were encroached upon to secure the record!".
When we landed back in Akrotiri, the APC squadron was quite cross. They'd been having to save fuel for weeks and yet there we were "wasting thousands of kilos just for an ego trip", as they put it. It's not easy to find any counter argument to that.
However that may be because it had also been very close behind an A4 in New Zealand and made contact with its refuelling kit.
Updick really shouldn't have left the crewroom whilst we were watching the video...
Normally he wouldn't let it out of his sight, but his PA told him that the Stn Cdr was on the phone. As soon as he'd rushed off to his office, we grabbed the squadron's portable (-ish...
) video recorder, did a rapid tape-to-tape transfer, then hid all the evidence before he came back. He never found out.....
