One of my sources also tells me that the Captain quite instictively selected flap to 25 to reduce the drag. If this is the case I would suggest that this stopped them hitting the road or ILS bank, and almost certain death.
Although one does what one must in an emergency, I doubt the statement's veracity. It just doesn't make sense given the loss of lift and the increase in rate-of-descent
at that stage of the approach, (last 400' or so) where recovery from loss of lift would not be possible - but...the data's not available to us so...