Actually, I think they'd probably be ok with the cat and trap, especially in the down position. But I don't know why you'd want them - they only help you see things that you shouldn't be focusing on anyway. Aside from that, you're obviously not seeing color and your acuity is degraded to probably 20/40 or 20/30 at best. It's not worth the trade-off to have an aided deck-spotting capability.
Regarding the story, I though it was pretty well done. The buddy bombing was a bit unusual, wouldn't have expected to see that.
That sounded more like hitting something at the same time and not buddy bombing. They were talking about being "In range".
And I wouldn't want anything to do with landing at the boat with NVGs.