I came across this thread recently and I can probably shed a little light on the accident. I was the pilot of ZE830 at Torness on 17 Nov 1999 but I don't think Iain's friend has the right accident. Both of us flew the Tornado again fairly soon after the crash and continued until we left the RAF in 2000 and 2001 to fly for Commercial airlines. We did receive a Green Endorsement for the crash but no medals. Several elements are not really covered in the BOI summary and the most significant was the weather at the time. It was a beautiful evening but the wind was 25-30 kts from the NW and sea state 6 meaning that ejection into the sea would almost certainly have had fatal results. Having manoeuvred to avoid the power station, I timed the ejection so that the aircraft would land in the sea but we would come down on land. I expected that we'd break bones on landing due to the high winds but we were both pretty much uninjured.
The farmer looked after us very well having seen the aircraft crash into the sea and our landing in his field. We were then taken to Hospital in Edinburgh by RAF Sea King for a quick check up before being flown to Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham for further post ejection checks.
I hope this helps with the search!