It makes me wonder how -DQJ sustained only minor damage while -DZJ seemingly became uncontrollable
Will be answered in good time, depends on where the hits occur.
Spaz can tell a story of how a youngster collided with his CO by hitting the underside of the bosses aircraft, the collision occurred to the lower aircrafts cockpit crushing and killing the youngster in the process. Caused a hydraulics failure in the bosses AC and the nose wheel collapsed when he took the arresting gear on landing.
As to his decision to return to EN, well I would probably have done the same.
Ditto, you make your assessments, controlability, level of known damage etc, talk of possibly crashing the aircraft in the suburbs, breaking news, it's a single engine aircraft and that could occur on any flight.