A few years ago, I had to do some serious soul-searching over fatigue. It was on TELIC, in support of a big ground op, and involving all the types operated by JHF(I). It was a little while after the regulations had all been brought into line so the three services were all operating under the same regulations.... now in this operation we bust them, and I mean bust them badly - however there ensues a sort of stand-off where nobody was going to be first to fess up - the RAF, Junglies and AAC were all hanging off their chinstraps but weren't going to let their service down in front of the other two. The JHF(I) commander at the time effectively colluded in this. We operated well beyond what I think was safe and it is probably just because the op did not proceed to its most complex phase that we didn't have an(other) accident. Sure, the op was important, but on reflection it was a very poor decision (on my part amongst others) to press for home in the morning once the op was over - a couple of hours of non-op flying that we didn't really NEED to do.
We are a lot more joint now, and there were some specific circumstances that may have influenced a couple of the det commanders to push it, but I still suspect that this sort of thing could occur again..... any thoughts?