Another driver in an F6 had a close encounter with the North Sea and ended up pulling an estimated 13½G pull up
Speaking to the mate involved, after he took his beak out of the boggle scope, he reckoned it was when he saw the OR946 attitude indicator showing nothing but black, with the nadir star right in the middle, followed by the Mach/ASI strip rapidly accelerating across the display, that he knew it was all about to go rather pear-shaped.....
After throttling back, all he could do was to PULL - and he was well over the IAS limit for airbrakes, so they were locked in... It went 'rather black'; when he woke up he was below 1000 ft in a shallow climb with the IAS rapidly decaying. He then sorted himself out, did a low speed handling check and flew back rather cautiously to Binbrook for an underwear change.
He told us that he had lace marks from his g-suit on his legs for days afterwards.