Sometime before 1981, a helicopter in the circuit at Farnborough reported to ATC that he had heard the MRF Canberra transmitting a 'mayday' call on 243 mhz. It had departed Farnborough some time previously for a research flight over the Bay of Biscay and indeed, this was where the 'mayday' call originated.
MRF aircrew weren't specialist aircrew, but were Hercules crew on detachment from Lyneham. On arrival at Farnborough, the pilots were given conversion training onto the Canberra.
Apparently what happened was, the pilot (name witheld) had somehow encountered a double flameout, but managed to land at a French military airfield having managed to re-light.
By the way, at Aldergrove in 1963 (long before it became Belfast International) there was a squadron of Hastings called the 'Met' Squadron (I think it was 208 but I may be wrong). Did these have any relationship to MRF?