The eyewitness gives an excellent account of what happened from his perspective. However his impression of good visibility is almost certainly different from the view through the cockpit windows. As an experienced captain on type I am struck by the similarity to the Lion Air crash in Bali and indeed the WestJet near miss at St Maarten. On a non precision approach if you lose sight of the runway or the approach becomes unstable it should be an immediate go-around. However this is a manoeuvre that for many pilots is quite rare outside the simulator. I may not be typical but cannot remember performing a go-around below minimum more than a couple of times in the last ten years and those were in tailwind going out of limit situations, so not much startle effect. On the 737 when you go-around you push the Toga buttons and then need to advance the thrust levers. If you are a bit slow remembering the last bit then the aircraft will rapidly lose energy and whilst raising the nose may reduce the sink rate I could imagine a scenario similar to the one described at Truk.