Have you fallen asleep at work?

[DemoTex]

13. I had been flying the Ho Chi Minh Trail most of the night during operation Lam Son 719.

It was dawn, and we were on the northeast-bound leg of a racetrack pattern over Laos flying an electronic counterwarfare radio intercept mission, and the whole crew was dog-tired. The anti-aircraft gun batteries had calmed down, and the two big R-3350 engines droned incessantly, with the props slightly out of sync. The sun was spilling in over the glareshield. A soporific situation.

Abeam Tchepone, Laos, the aircraft sounds changed. I suddenly woke up to find the nose dangerously above the horizon with the airspeed decaying. I grabbed the control wheel and throttles and initiated a recovery (there was no autopilot). I looked over and saw that my co-pilot was sound asleep, but waking suddenly with the changes in aircraft sounds. I glanced back into the mission bay and all of the intercept operators were sound asleep. Called the aft galley on the interphone: woke them up.

The entire crew, including me, had drifted off to sleep. But my maneuvering to recover from an unusual attitude woke everyone onboard. How long had I been asleep? Three to five minutes max. I had plotted a SAM site about 8-10 minutes earlier, about 25-30 nautical miles back (we were flying the mission at 180 knots - 3 nm/minute).

During Lam Son 719, crew rest and duty/flight time limitations went out the window. Exigencies of war. But after that experience, we were all careful to keep our buddies awake, especially the pilots!