BOAC,
I think the subject of intervention on the controls is somewhat contentious and depends entirely on the individual circumstances.
I think that if you are heading towards the ground at 800fpm and are more than a second or two from 'touching' down, then any input to increase the AoA of the wings and start to reduce the vertical speed component is a good thing.
I also propose that the the old 'drive the wheels into the ground' chestnut is mostly a 'red herring'. (Excuse my mixed metaphors!)
The wheels are not that far from the C.G., about which you are attempting to rotate the aircraft. Look at how misloading can tip an aircraft onto it's tail for proof of that. If you work out the relative motion of the wheel units for a given change in body angle, it's pretty small.
At the end of the day it's about how the mass of the aircraft is decelerated as the suspension compresses beneath it - there is a fixed amount of oleo travel and if you use all this up your landing will become very much harder.
If the travel is, say, 5ft then you wish the rate of descent of everything else attached to the upper end to reduce to zero at 4'11 3/4" travel. Any reduction in V/S prior to touchdown will help this be achieved.
Extra thrust? Nice if you can get it but with today's big fans you'll probably get a good whoosh of power after impact! Also, if you resolve the forces, given normal touchdown attitudes, the amount of force applied to the mass of the aircraft normal to the runway surface is totally inadequate to produce any significant change in the rate of descent. I think this other 'old chestnut' comes from the days of propellors where the wash over the wing produced an increase of lift as well as thrust.
To get a jet aircraft to radically change the direction it's going in a short space of time in you have to change the AoA of the wing (thrust vectoring excepted).