In terms of the basic fuel plan, it was built around a
cascading system of Victor to Victor refuelling and er
so the initial formation was planned with four Victors in er
red formation, four Victors in white formation and then
three Victors supporting the two Vulcans,
the primary and his backup, in blue formation.
So a total of eleven aeroplanes.
After a couple of hours or so the
first eight tankers would refuel each other so
four on four and progress on towards the second bracket,
that would leave four Victors full to the gunnels
and in blue formation the one remaining Vulcan which was
obviously dedicated to the bombing task,
would be continuing en route with his tanker
out of those three available initially.
On to the second plan, second refuelling bracket,
there would be five Victors present with the one Vulcan
and basically the fuel was juggled amongst them all, er
the Vic, the Vulcan taking a couple more top ups because
he needed frequent refuelling. His tankage wasn't clearly
anywhere near as large as the Victor
so that at the end of bracket two,
the next er phase would be for the remaining
two tankers to press on to the third refuelling area
with the Vulcan in tow. Um the plan at bracket three,
would be for one of the Victors, as it happened myself,
to top up the Vulcan and then refuel the other Victor to full
and then the remaining Victor would then take on
the Vulcan to the final refuelling and then despatch him
400 miles north of the Falkland Islands
with enough fuel to go in, make his bombing run
and then recover up against the er Argentinian coast
up towards the Brazil area
and then refuel from the second wave of tankers
which had been despatched some five or six hours after
the initial departure to get two tankers to him at,
what we call the rear rendezvous
and to offer two hosedrum units and then
bring back the Vulcan who needed that final transfer
to get back to Ascension Island.
So that w.., that was the overall plan.