Airline Pilot and Army Helicopter UH-60 and CH-47 Pilot here. In the airlines there is the occasional "oh shit" but not the extent of bending a wing. These occasional mistakes could cause a loss of separation with other aircraft or a computer programing error that tells the aircraft to navigate off the planned route or fly to the wrong altitude. These do not have to actually happen to have the "oh shit moment" though. Because of the redundancy of the systems and the crew, these problems are almost always found before an event can take place. For me, when every once in a while one is found I have an "oh shit, we could fucked up there" moment. One of the the reasons the Airlines are so safe is because of all of the systems that are in place to prevent an error from actually happening but knowing they you made a mistake that could of caused an unsafe condition is a terrible feeling.

There is also the occasional day where the weather is going to give an "oh shit" moment. This past fall we tried to make an approach to an airport with a winds gusting to 42kts and a cross wind of around 30kts. We were close to our max crosswind limitation, but within the aircraft's limitations to land. At 1,500ft AGL tower called saying he was getting a low level windshear alert which we could hear in the background coming over the radio as he was talking. Around that same time, the airplane felt like it went into a free fall. With full power applied, the aircraft responded well and we powered out of the descent and climbed back up to altitude. It was clear we were not going to land there so we flew to our alternate airport which due to the winds over the entire region had winds at 45kts gusting to 52kts this time down the runway. It was a white knuckle ride the whole way down but I got it on the ground safely. Once we got to the gate, the ground crew had to put sandbags on top of the wheel chocks to keep them from blowing away.

While I have never felt any real risk to life in the airlines, it was in the Army that I learned what being close to death feels like. There is a feeling of tightness all over my body, a sense of hyper awareness and a one hell of an adrenaline rush afterwards. This feeling has come on each time I have gotten close to "buying the farm" whether I am being shot at or things are just going way wrong. My first real experience with this was flying as the copilot of chalk two of a flight of two CH-47's flying around 500ft above to ground in Iraq at night. We had left a base north of Baghdad on a logistics run to Mosul with a stop for fuel at Camp Speicher. While landing there, we could see what looked like a wall something north of the camp but since were were flying with NVGs it was hard to tell what it was. My thought was it either a localized area of reduced visibility or a dust storm. After getting fuel, we spoke with the local Air Force weather guy and he said it was clear all the way to Mosul. I mentioned about the reduction in vis to the north but he said he had no reports of anything but clear and he thought it was nothing. As a fairly new Platoon leader and copilot, I had authority over the flight on the ground but as soon as it lifted off, command transferred to the pilot in command and the air mission commander who was a warrant officer. I did not want to press north but I trusted my pilot's much higher level of experience so we went. As soon as we flew over the wire to the north, it was obviously dust that was moving to the south. With the help of the light coming up from the town of Baiji, I could barely make out the ground, the strobe light and the glow of the turbine engines on chalk one as we followed about 6 rotor disk lengths behind. The visibility was now quickly dropping to nothing. It hit me quickly that as soon as we fly past the town, the light will be gone and we will lose all of our references. And just like that the light from the ground dissipated and I watched the strobe from chalk one go blink, blink, and then nothing. I now know that I am a few hundred feet away from our sister ship and there is a real possibility that the next time I see them will be as we are crashing into them. I pulled back on the power to slow down, transitioned to my instruments while watching the radar altimeter tell me I was only a few hundred feet from the ground and I called to the crew asking if anyone can see the ground to which everyone say no. Everyone that is, except for the warrant officer who is the pilot in command. Regulations state in this situation that we need transition to instruments, pull up to a safe altitude and fly into Air Force controlled airspace which is above the hard deck and call Kingpin and declare an emergency. This however, is viewed by many pilots in the Army as them admitting to fucking up so there is a bit of a cultural tendency not to do this. He took the controls and turned to the south without pulling up to gain any altitude. I know the terrain in the area had steep elevation changes of at least a few hundred feet as the radar altimeter was rapidly changing to just a few hundred feet altitude. I again said we needed to go up and call kingpin but he said again he could see the ground. I quickly got on the radio with our sister ship who also decided to try and stay low and turn around I continually called out or location so we did not have a midair. I also continually called our attitude, altitude and airspeed working to back up the other pilot to ensure we did not turn ourselves into a burning hole in the ground. It was in these few short moments as I could not see a damn thing and with great doubt that the other pilot could not either and with the rolling elevation of the earth a few hundred feet below me and not knowing what was coming in front of us I realized we likely just used our last few moments alive to create another Army aviation training vignette. My body tightened up for the coming impact and I thought that maybe I will get lucky and never see it coming. I then quickly felt anger as I realized what my family was about to go through with my loss the hell it would be on them. I kept backing up the other pilot by making the calling outs and just like that we popped out of of the dust. I could now see the high points of the desert right below us as we skirted over the tops of them and the lights of Baiji come into view. Within a min we could start to see our sister ship about a 2 miles ahead of us as we were now coming back on course to Speicher. With a quick call to tower, we were cleared to land and by the time with had flown the 10 miles back to the vis was clear. As soon as the wheels touched the ground and I had control authority back, I lost it on the pilot. I yelled at him for what he had done and for not following regulations. I got on the radio to the other aircraft and told him to shut down and that we were not going anywhere.