SAS, no, there were no meteor shower at the time and even if there were, they wouldn't have been able to see them due to lots of cloud.
The point about the Vietnam vet thing is that you guys have (I suspect) been exposed to more life or death situations requiring instant reflexes to survive. This was learned behaviour aided by a massive dose of adrenalin.
By contrast a career N Sea pilot may well have never had a life/death instant decision situation. The human brain is an analogue computer, various levels of analogue input from various sensors are summed up to create a resultant output. In your case, life/death reflex had a lot of gain in the computer due to it being learned, and was thus the predominant stimulus. By contrast a career N Sea pilot has seen many situations with someone else (often unqualified) breathing down their necks and making grief for them whenever there is a hiccup. In the absence of life/death familiarity, a reluctance to fall foul of this sort of thing becomes the predominant autonomous reaction. Of course, if the pilot were able to press pause and think for a few seconds, he would decide to rapidly raise the lever and stuff the passengers' upset. But he didn't have that luxury so his brain was in autonomous mode due to the lack of thinking time, resorting to its learned behaviour which is to avoid upsetting the pax.
Regarding your penultimate para, I think that because that is what you said.