Mansfield -
DC-ATE, I'm not sure I see the connection between your 737 event of forty some years ago and ice contaminated tailplane stall. It sounds to me more like a regular old contaminated wing stall, although I'd sure be interested in more details. Along those lines, there have been a couple of good ASRS reports involving 737s. Look up these NASA ASRS report numbers: 426216 and 815450. In the first case, I know the captain who wrote it and I have seen his pictures. He wasn't exaggerating.
I read both reports. Similar in a way to my experience, except mine was a training flight. I've stalled a few airplanes in my day [NEVER a jet transport.....until this incident], and never had one behave like this one did. The elevator became useless in my hands well before stick-shaker ever activated. To me that was an indication of an approaching stall, which is what we were training for and I commenced the recovery
procedure. But the "Instructor" said "No, no...take it to the Stick Shaker." So we did the maneuver again. This time I got the same indication, only a few knots sooner [a good 20 knots above what it should have been]. I pointed this out to the "Instructor", and he said to take it to the stick shaker. I would not have continued had we not enough altitude. We were 10T above ground. So, I "took it to the Stick Shaker" and the aircraft really started to stall well before it got there, but I hung on until we were in a full stall and the stick shaker came on! So, I looked over at him and said, "NOW do you believe me?!" He just sat there. I shoved the throttles full forward [mistake Number One], shoved [or tried to] the nose down, and called for Flaps 15. Naturally, the aircraft kept going DOWN with its nose in the air. I knew what I was going to do, but looked over at my "Instructor" and asked him. He just sat there with his eyes twice thier normal size not having a clue what to do. I merely reduced power by about 50%. The nose came down, airspeed increased, and we flew out of it. But...it took 2000 feet to recover!
About the only thing this "Instructor" did right was to have the engine anit-ice ON. We were doing all this at night in the overcast in the COS 'training' area. My 'stick partner' was in the middle seat and wondered if we had any ice. We flipped on the wing lights and sure enough.....about 2 inches or more.
Maybe our "Instructor" went to the same school as 411A and others on here who seem to think airfoil ice on jet transports isn't anything to really worry about. Anyway, there wasn't any ASRS back then as I recall, but I submitted 'my' report to our ALPA Safety Rep, and my Flight Manager. I was told a copy was sent to Boeing but never heard anything about it.
That was the first of two incidents I experienced with TAIL ICE on the 737-200. Another time was after landing in CMH. We had been in the overcast for some time and had engine and wing heat ON. We wished we had tail heat. We carried an extra 20 knots on final. When we got to the gate, I ran out and looked at the tail. At least FOUR inches of ice was till there AFTER we had been clear of clouds for the past ten minutes !
Both of these incedents were before the MDW one. When that happened, we were unsuccessful in presenting 'my' reports to the NTSB. They simply were not considered.
Ice on jet transports of ANY size is something you should be concerned with no matter how many thousands of hours you have.