While there is no shortage of articles concerning the dangers of Somatogravic Illusions during a GA or take off, I sometimes wonder if crashes blamed on this phenomena are really due to lack of instrument cross-reference skills. High performance fighters being catapulted at night from aircraft carriers seldom crash after take off even though this illusion may be present. This suggests current basic instrument flying skills play a significant part in reducing the effect of the illusion
With 90 percent of flying in airliners being on automatic pilot it is well documented that pure flying skills requiring reversion to basic instrument flying are degraded. A GA around on a black wet night followed by a circling approach is a difficult manoeuvre at the best of times. Depite furious button pushing by the crew, it may be the automatics simply cannot keep up thereby forcing the pilot to revert to manual instrument flying skills for which he is not fully competent. It takes just a few seconds to get into an unusual attitude under these conditions and if the pilot is not competent at low altitude raw data UA recoveries then likely it is curtains for all aboard.