Maybe we should throw GT, or any other hero here who wants to blame a crew who can’t defend themselves anymore, into the sim and recreate the conditions those pilots (I’m thinking more ET) experienced, and see if any of these heroes have the physical strength to physically pitch the aircraft up when the stab has trimmed so far nose down.
After having seen some videos where crews in a sim were presented with similar conditions and struggled to maintain control it would be difficult, even for experienced crews with prior knowledge of what was going to happened as opposed to a crew who was presented with a surprise event that didn’t match any of their prior training.