TigerMate,
Having flown a bang seat a few times myself (including more recent time after those halcyon 230 days) I personally wouldn't want to risk a crash landing on a live seat. It might go off, it might not, it might go off but malfunction etc etc. All a bit too unpredictable and there is no guarantee what the level of damage to the airframe and hence one's person is going to be anyway.
BTW,
We were on the same squadron back then unless you were hovering in Walter Wessex at the time! I arrived at EDUO to begin my tour just as the crash occurred. Particularly sad for me, the pilot (Nigel Storah) was an ex-creamie QFI I had previously flown with at 1FTS. He and I had an occasion to read FRCs together one dark night somewhere over South Yorkshire. We thought we were going to be required to land separately from the airframe shortly afterwards, but in the event we got safely back to Linton.