PKPF68-77
re your points:
(1) The MOD reply implies that they cannot identify this individual – a real pity that.
(2) If they had no need or instruction to approach it very closely, they should have taken action earlier than the position of waypoint change (very close in) – if they had to get closer, for whatever reason, their problem would not have been that they could not see it but rather judging how far off they were – they would not have trusted the SuperTANS to have been accurate enough after a sea crossing.
(3) You could download and read Boeing's “Analysis of Available Data” (Mitchel), a decent effort, wherein it is calculated that they had indeed started to slow down significantly but that the increase in tail wind as they closley approached the landmass and crossed the shoreline compensated for the reduction achieved before the final few seconds.
A simple explanation for their actions is that they intended to approach a particular point on the Mull but something they were using as a local reference misled them in their judgment of range to go – that something would have had to have been trusted to have been more accurate than the SuperTANS as they had discarded the only useful waypoint to them , A, that had been stored in the SuperTANS.