Falling asleep in combat

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I used to do alot of travelling and I was in my element driving at night.
Never got sleepy no matter what I had been doing during the day.
Except driving interstate 5 through the central valley and encountering Tule Fog - it's completely mesmerizing and I caught myself not only nodding off, but getting "point fixated" to where everything gets tuned out.
The other condition that I've had a close call with, was again, driving at night but in a snowstorm. The oncoming snow was a great deal like something from Star Wars, jumping into "hyperspace" - it was hypnotic as hell...
 
Just read about a sailor who fell asleep on guard duty on the Prinz Eugen.

Sleep wasn't an issue....but sadly it was more of the forever kind.
 
Combat is probably one of the most stressful environments possible (I'd rather not find out, although I've read that USN aviators showed more serious physiological signs of stress during night carrier landings. This means that I'll also continue to try hard to avoid landing on a carrier, as well as not being anywhere near combat*. I'll walk up the gangplank, thank you). On the other hand, people react to stress in varied ways. After a while, no matter how much stress is around, your brain will be functionally asleep.
 
Per Wikipedia, the A6M Zero had a ferry range of 3,102 km (1,927 mi, 1,675 nmi). With a cruise speed of 333 km/h (207 mph, 180 kn) that's almost nine and half hours of flying. With no autopilot to keep him straight and level, and no radio connection to the outside world, how does this IJN pilot stay awake and alert?

It's amazing that with favorable winds the Zero could fly from Singapore to Kaohsiung on a single tank of gas, https://www.distance.to/Singapore,SGP/Kaohsiung-City,TWN

 
9.5 hours is mind boggling. I can only drive for about 2 hours straight before my legs start twitching and I need to stop. On my motorbike it's only an hour or so.
 
As I mentioned in the Guadacanal thread, the IJA stationed in New Guinea had to fly their fighters to the Philippines for maintenance (which was about 1,500 miles one-way) instead of flying over to he IJN base in the Solomons (shy of 400 miles one way) because there wasn't co-operation between the branches.

It was not uncommon, on long flights, for one or more fighters to slowly wander out of formation, eventually plunging into the ocean.
This happened to both IJN and IJA flights - incidently, the KI-43 had a ferry range of 2,000 miles.
 
When I was young, and dumb, I drove from St Louis Mo, to Denver Co, in, 17 hours. almost 1000 miles., on my way to my new station at Hill AFB, Utah.
1968, the interstate across Kansas was under construction, so I took roads across the northern border of the state, 2 lanes almost the whole way.
I only got out of the car for nature calls. Full service gas stations, and full service at drive ins meant you didn't have to get out of the car.

If I could have got a pilot's pal, I would have used it.
A 6 cylinder Rambler with no AC, in July, and just me.

I used to do trips like that all the time.
Maybe that's why now I have a hard time going a hour without a pee.
 
The Basket said:
Just read about a sailor who fell asleep on guard duty on the Prinz Eugen.

Sleep wasn't an issue....but sadly it was more of the forever kind.
Click to expand...

In my practice, it was not very often but still a typical occasion on some night watches. We did not tolerate it normally, but we made exceptions when all crew was extremely exhausted, for example, after the "marathon" of ship-to-ship bunkering, serving up to 7 vessels in a day (I served on the tanker).
Years later, I found myself napping few times in regular and monotonous sailing around Europe, North to Med and back. Once it happened when the Spanish coast was just 3-4 miles on the port side. Dangerous and unprofessional... I considered that as an omen and terminated my sea career next year.
 



In 1968, we drove across KS along the southern route, thru Wichita and Dodge City, then Lamar CO, and Limon, and Denver (on vacation and visiting family along the way), in a '59 Ford Galaxy with no A/C in August!!. It was "kinda miserable", to be charitable about it all. Once we got to Colorado, of course, in the mountains, things became more tolerable. I think that was the first vacation we had ever been on, I was nine years old, and soaked up every bit of it. If you drove across MO and KS on US 36, (soon to be a new Interstate Highway), you passed by our place, our farm was five miles south of US 36 in N/C Missouri.
 
fastmongrel said:
9.5 hours is mind boggling.
Click to expand...

Not in a fighter, but the crew of the B-17 'Little Willie' of the 388th Bomb Group was in the air for a total of 9.5 hours during the 6 March 1944 raid on Berlin. The aircraft had two engines knocked out by flak near Berlin, was forced to leave the bomber formation, and then flew all the way back to England at low altitude at just 115 MPH.
 
We just completed today a 2000 mile (we did not drive the shortest route because we were sight seeing) trip from St. Louis, MO through Kansas and Colorado to Salt Lake City, Utah, to Reno, Nevada. I probably dozed off a few times...lol

The epic journey is not over. We still have Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Sequoia, Lassen NP, and San Francisco. Then we fly to Hawaii. Then we come back and drive through Idaho and Wyoming on our way back to St. Louis. Will probably doze off again. lol
 
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