411A, the uncontained engine failure occurred at 125kt, and the max IAS during the whole incident was 126kt. No engine fire warning occurred until passing 85kt during deceleration, owing to the fire emanating from the wing fuel tank access panel vs. the engine. Incidentally, the report states that the fuel access panel had an impact strength approx. one quarter that of the surrounding lower wing skin - and that if the ejected engine debris had struck the skin vs. the panel then penetration of the fuel tank would not have occurred. Very unfortunate.
Fireflybob, it sounds like you are in a similar situation to me in that my companies' ops manual had advice incorporated to the same effect - but it's not really practised e.g. in the sim. Zeroflap sounds like he's had a chance to actually give it a go which would seem like the way forward - given the intense workload / stress during an RTO from high speed, I think you really need this kind of response hardwired into your system. A high speed reject is not the time to be pondering the quartering tailwind case for the first time! I imagine in most companies (certainly my own) you can always ask to try it in the sim, but I personally feel it should be covered as an important and integral part of a conversion course. Who else actually includes this in their formal training syllabus?
There are parallels between this incident and the Air France Concorde crash, and one wonders whether the accepted go / no-go decision crieria are overly simplistic. Undoubtedly with a "straightforward" engine failure (if there is such a thing!), the concept of V1 would seem eminently sensible. But if the Air France Concorde had stopped, even if the RTO had been initiated above V1 (assuming they'd had appropriate cockpit information to indicate they had a serious problem, which I don't think they did) and they'd overrrun, surely that would be better than the tragedy which ensued? Yet the poor chaps in the front were acting entirely in accordance with accepted training. Similarly for the MAN 737 accident, at least some people escaped alive - had they continued the take-off, perhaps the wing spar would have failed with the heat, as mustafagander suggests. Certainly they had no means of extinguishing an airborne fuel tank fire other than airflow. One wonders whether there is a tendency for V1 to be considered as some kind of magic wand which guarantees safety - when all it really does is tell you if you'll stop within the ADSA or meet the appropriate performance criteria if you continue (including a mere 15' obstacle clearance from an obstacle-limited wet runway, incidentally!). Surely it could be acknowledged that there are circumstances where an overrun is the best of a bad set of options, again as mustafagander suggests?