The Flyer's Mind

When his plane got up to altitudes of 15,000 ft. and over, Lieut. H. P. began to have muscular cramps. His skin crawled, and he was sick. A Fortress navigator, H. P. said nothing about this to the other men in the crew. But one day on a training flight he vomited; the pilot whirled the bomber back to base immediately.

That was in 1942, when the Eighth Air Force in Britain was just getting ready for combat. H. P. was grounded, became the first neuropsychiatric or "nervous" casualty among U.S. airmen in the European theater of operations.

Chamber Trick. The flight surgeons were pretty sure of their diagnosis, but they wanted to rule out any chance that the physical effects of high altitude actually caused the trouble. So they put H. P. into a pressure chamber where various heights were simulated by changes of air pressure.

When they told him he was at 17,000 ft. (actually the pressure equaled only 3,000 ft.), the familiar symptoms developed ; when they told him he was down to 3,000 ft. (actually the pressure was decreased to 17,000 ft.), he felt normal again. It was clear that his physical distress was entirely caused by a mental disturbance. He had a psychoneurosis. They sent him to a hospital for a rest.

When combat operations started, the number of neuropsychiatric casualties multiplied, although only a small percentage of the total air personnel was disabled. The Air Force medicos learned that enlisted men are less susceptible than officers --because officers, on the whole, have livelier imaginations. A high incidence of mental disturbance might have been expected among tail gunners, for at that time enemy fighters habitually attacked bomber formations from the rear, and tailgunner casualties were high. But tail gunners generally were sound, cheerful and proud: the position carried prestige and there was competition for it.

Everybody's Afraid. Many flyers found their sleep disturbed by "battle dreams," in which they relived grueling episodes of air combat. First therapy: the flight surgeon would encourage the sufferer to "talk" out his dreams and his experiences, and would explain that everyone taking off on a combat mission, from the seamiest veteran to the quivering first-timer, was in some degree afraid. If that did not work, he was grounded and sent to a rest home where sports, occupational therapy, indoor games, etc., were designed to take his mind off himself.

As the air war spread over the globe, new medical defenses were set up against the rise of neuropsychiatric disabilities. At a meeting in Philadelphia last fortnight of the American Psychiatric Association, Lieut. Colonel Roy Grinker and Major John Spiegel of the Army Air Forces Medical Corps described a technique known as "narcosynthesis." With such drugs as sodium pentothal and scopolamine, the afflicted flyer is reduced to a quasi-dream state in which he can talk freely but coherently about his innermost feelings.

Guilt Reactions. "One of the most amazing revelations," said Colonel Grinker, "has been the universality of guilt reactions." A flyer catches a bad cold and is unable to take off; another man goes in his place, and is lost in action. The first man is very likely to feel guilty . . . and under narcosynthesis may shout, "I should have got it instead of him!"

Flyers who complete their overseas duty and return to the States are likely to feel that they have "deserted" their squadrons. (Squadron loyalty, rather than love of home and country, is the dynamic factor in a flyer's will to fight.) Though honorably repatriated, such men may develop abdominal pains and fits of vomiting, or become chronic alcoholics.

A special kind of psychoneurosis may attack the airmen who come back to their home towns in a bedlam of plaudits. They contrast the public idea of themselves with their fears and qualms in air fights, and the conflict thus engendered may set up a serious disturbance.

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