Salute!
Thanks Just and Mog, good stuff
And @ Flap..... The new planes are almost what you describe. Move stick (and maybe a bit of rudder) to where you want to go and the thing will do whatever it takes to get you there. Clever pilots can still get to corners of the envelope where the best efforts of the control surfaces and Hal's commands to them are not enough. But usually you do not wind up in a spin or deep stall. Nose falls thru, speed increases, controls work again and fight's on. Did my tail slide in a Viper hundred years ago, and the gal got good air over the control surfaces once nose fell thru and I was flying again. I did it by zooming almost 90 degrees and got too slow before pulling back into the bandit.
The rule of thumb in the Viper those early days was if the nose was still responding, then don't let off the back stick. The early deep stall guys got there by zooming and unloading too long. Speed got too slow for the elevator to get the nose down and some of the time you would get into the classic deep stall.
The first Eagle encounters we had clearly showed that plane's great nose authority when slow and we had to adapt our tactics. We could go up with them to their surprise, but we had problems at the top due to our AoA limiter. Remember that only 10 years after VietNam we were getting down to WW2 speeds. In the late 60's and early 70's nobody wanted to get slow in the F-4 or F-8.
Sad to see loss of the jet, and also glad the dude got out.
Gums sends...