I've heard some players in the game who "claim" to have checked the damage to the buildings at an enemy base while still enroute to the target. Possibly they were talking to a squadron buddy on a private frequency who was over the target base. Maybe they were just going on "old" information... i don't know. But i never heard any "radio" traffic about the target base. Is there some place in the game where the status of an enemy base can be checked ? I haven't found any resource like that anywhere. Of course the status of our own bases can be checked at the hanger screen. I'm talking about ENEMY bases.
There is one rather disturbing possibility. People could be playing using TWO computers. It would be possible then to check the other sides bases, even knowing the location of CV's, Mission routes and planes not seen on radar... If you were logged in on the other computer as the opposing country. I hope no one is playing this way... but the desire to put up unbelievably LOW scores is very seductive. Has anyone seen any evidence some players are using this strategy ?
On map, rightclick on enemy field, then select "Status" from the various options that appear. Or Shift-rightclick on it directly.
Of course this only shows a kind of general status. "Fighter Hangars: Disabled" means all fighter hangars are down, but if at least one FH is still up, it will will just read "Enabled". You won't see from hit how many, if any, of the various FH's on base are down, until all of them are.
To your question #2: Yes such thing does occasionally happen. But it's A) much rarer than many people say, B) often exaggerated in it's results too (and you don't get a fancy "rank" from it wich isn't worth anything anyway) and C) it's best to completely ignore that kind of behaviour - one problem is that looking for "spies" easily gets into a silly witchhunt in which truth & reason quickly fall prey to overinflated egos's