As the 'RAF Boscombe Down's Black Day' link has been posted here, may I add some facts surrounding this; I was a test pilot on Experimental Flying Squadron at Boscombe at the time. The first that we knew of this story was when it appeared in The Sunday Express. At morning briefing the next day the Group Captain Superintendent of Flying stood up and asked if anyone knew what the hell the story was about! We concluded that it revolved around two items.
First, trials were being flown at that time of the Towed Radar Decoy system on the Tornado F3 and on one sortie the crew were unable to jettison the decoy and had to land with it still attached. The runway in use at Boscombe was 05 where the approach is over the main Amesbury to Salisbury road so the police closed the road while the aircraft landed. An Emergency State was declared such that the Fire and Rescue vehicles positioned at the threshold and followed the aircraft after it touched down. It was shut down on the runway because it could not taxi back with the decoy still attached. If you look at a Tornado tail-on it appears to sit nose low.
Secondly, Tornado F2A ZD902, the Tornado Integrated Avionics Research Aircraft, was in one of the hangars for maintenance. It was parked with the airbrakes open, canopy removed and the nose section containing the windscreen, which hinges at the front, raised. The cockpit was covered in a tarpaulin to prevent contamination by the resident pigeons. I walked across the apron after watching the last flight of the Nightbird Buccaneer and the hangar doors were fully open at both ends and, with the sun aspect, TIARA looked most unusual and not like a Tornado at all; I did comment on this at the time.
And so starts a good rumour and conspiracy theory ....
In the mid 1980's, two Boscombe Down 'A' Squadron TPs did carry out an evaluation of the F-117. However, such evaluations were part of the squadron's task and similar assessments had been flown on the F-15, YF-17 and EAP. Also, an RAF pilot who did an exchange tour on the F-117 subsequently trained as a TP at ETPS then served as a TP at Farnborough before leaving the RAF and working as a TP for BAE at Warton.
The ASTRA Hawk was a variable stability aircraft which was operated by ETPS and not RAFCAM, ASTRA standing for Airborne Simulation, Training and Research Aircraft.
I genuinely have no knowledge of any of the other aspects of the story!
Rgds
L