Gopher,
Great post at #979. It was certainly a busy time. I love the scaffold pole tale. I am sure it is true. I have similar tales of scaffold poles being used in other areas (helicopters).
SD - I am not altogether sure if the wooden strake on the R was cased in fibre glass at RAE Bedford. I know they made the plinth for the OMEGA aerial that was fitted in the same vicinity and about the same era. - it may have been after hostilities ceased. As I noted in a previous post the stakes got bigger and additional stabilisers were added to the tail plane in time.
Going back to aerodynamics and the flow around the back of the aircraft: This topic remains a black art. I served a NATO Ctee for a while. we had a UK "Expert" lets call him "Slippery". He was charged to investigate the use of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) the topic was parachute deployment. I am not sure how much was spent, but it was a serious amount of the AWC budget. Did it help? Did it hell as like. Could not predict anything with any certainty. Slippery left the RAF to run off with his French bird several years ago but he did well out of this project with a licence to travel the globe to every academic establishment dealing in CFD. My boss referred to him as Judith (Chalmers of Wish you were here fame). It was always suck it and see. We spent a fortune on trials to establish cross over on Sim Sticks with the LLP. Analysis of video was best. As I understand things the technique of lowering the undercarriage on the A400M in an effort to straighten things out for airdrop and para was not as a result of any CFD. I may be wrong but that's what I was told.