So what is the explanation for these overwhelming feelings
After reading John Farley's fascinating story above, it reminded me of the time I was flying an RAAF Lincoln on a low level maritime navigation exercise over the Coral Sea. We had been airborne for many hours and the crew was tired. We were heading home for our base at Townsville. I was very weary and slipping the co-pilot into the left seat I went down the back for a 30 minute nap knowing we had a reliable navigator.
We had been cruising at 1500 feet over the sea for the whole trip and the sun was coming up on the horizon. It was damnably uncomfortable between the main and rear spar using my parachute pack as a pillow. The noise of four Merlins was quite soporific and I quickly fell into a deep sleep.
I don't know for how long I was asleep but something woke me and clear as a bell I felt impending danger and quickly scrambled over the main spar to get up front. I then realised both the signaller and navigator were slumped over their desks asleep. The co-pilot in the captain's seat was asleep as well. I saw we were in IMC (fog) at 1500 feet. By now I was standing in the aisle next to the captain's seat and was able to lean over the sleeping co-pilot, disconnect the autopilot and haul back on the control column while at the same time pushing all four throttles and pitch levers to climb power. Within seconds we were out of the top of the fog into sunlight.
Ten miles dead ahead was Palm island with its jungle clad peak at 1800 ft sticking up through the low cloud and fog. . If a sixth sense hadn't awoken me a minute earlier we would have hit the island in cloud 300 feet below the top.