The "constant leaking" on the ground gets overblown a bit. The primary reason for the immediate refueling is that they would take off with a minimal fuel load,

The "constant leaking" on the ground gets overblown a bit. The primary reason for the immediate refueling is that they would take off with a minimal fuel load, because the plane performed very poorly one engine. Fully loaded with fuel they would have basically no chance of recovering from an engine failure on takeoff.