Jackonicko
The original trace in the preliminary report shows control column
negative input as the pilot rotated and for the next approximately 12 seconds where it became
positive and remained so for the duration of the flight. The key says "+ Nose Up". The first interim report corrects this to "+ Nose Down".
Of course, if I'd been thinking properly, I'd have realised the error since, as you say, it would be a pretty neat trick to rotate with nose down input on the control column!
I don't think I was implying that he was "fighting" to keep the nose down, more that there was a moderate amount of nose down input, contrary to what I had originally thought which led me to wonder if he was trying to maintain altitude at the expense of airspeed.
I see more clearly now
, and think he was more likely, as you suggest, to have been doing some delicate speed control by nudging the nose forward under what power he had available.
To comment on your last few paragraphs, I've been trying to visualise the flight path from the CDR traces, and ended up actually modelling the aircraft for the last 30 seconds of the flight, in a 3D program I use, to try and get my head round it.
Having done that, I would venture to suggest that the real critical problem was not attitude or angle of attack, but roll. As you say, neither of the former parameters was all that excessive for most of the flight, and by the time AoA did become excessive, the roll to the left was around or above 90 degrees. At that point, lift production is purely academic. I don't think the roll angle got this bad because the pilot tried to turn too hard or too late.
I suspect it would have had more to do with control surface problems, specifically elevon failure on the left wing. Since the pilot was demanding slight nose-down during the fire, if one of the left elevons became frozen in place, it's not hard to see how that would cause an unstable situation leading to uncontrollable anticlockwise roll. It may even be that it was this extreme angle of bank which caused the #1 engine to ingest greater quantities of the burning fuel (leaking from inboard of the engines) and finally give up the ghost.
Whatever causes and effects or the actual sequence of events, by this time, the plane was uncontrollable with no more options left to the pilot. Furthermore, with this event about to happen, I don't think there was anything more he could have done at any point during the flight.
In many ways, this also makes all the other questions about TOW, CoG, tailwind, missing spacer bar, and anything else that didn't directly contribute to the fuel fire, purely academic. If your control surfaces lock up, you're in big trouble regardless of your height, speed, or anything else for that matter.
In my mind, it's back to the question of how and why the fuel leak and subsequent fire started; all other questions being interesting but not significant.
[ 05 September 2001: Message edited by: Covenant ]