Very many years ago, an AEW Shackleton Squadron was on a 2 week deployment to St Mawgan for a JMC Exercise. QRA was being covered back at Lossie with a couple of aircraft and a couple of crews while the rest of the Sqn provided 24 hour coverage for the NATO fleet in the SW Approaches.
Our crew had just finished its 8 hours on station and was returning to St Mawgan when we got a radio message... QRA had launched and the spare was U/S. CAOC needed another Shackleton back at Lossie to cover a gap (The Bears were quite active because of the JMC). We were ordered to return direct to Lossie using Leuchars as the div although the weather was not brilliant for both. The Nav and Eng got together and calculated the fuel... we did not have enough to get back to Lossie with enough for the Leuchars div. We reported this to our ops. Back came a message.... use Leuchars as the destination with Lossie as the Div and then divert to Lossiemouth with low fuel. We questioned the order. Press on came the reply.
We were fortunate enough to have a strong minded captain who told us to head north until we were near minima for St Mawgan and we would check the fuel again. Strong northerly winds slowed our progress north and we dutifully went back to Mawgan, and a not happy flight commander, on our minima with div fuel intact. As it was, we would not have had the fuel to make Lossie even without the div fuel so honour was maintained at both ends, but it certainly led the crews to look at instructions from base with caution!