Lu Zuckerman,
Your right the bad maintenance got flight 261 into trouble in the first place. Where the pilot went wrong was in forgetting the GOLDEN RULE: FLY THE F.....ing damn airplane!!!
When the Jackscew intitially had problems they went into their first dive of which they recovered and got stabalized. Instead of choosing to land the airplane, the pilot chose to go out over the water and try and trouble shoot it so he would not have to land at 180 kts. Its when they started playing around with it that it broke entirely and they went in the water, backwards I add.
In my opinion the pilot should have landed that plane after the first dive. They blamed the jackscrew, but everybody at the FAA and Alaska knows what really caused that crash.
My grandpa once told me: Screw around, screw around and soon you wont be around when it comes to airplanes.