And he had an ejection seat, too!
At the bottom of a dive, in a serviceable aircraft able to pull g, the aircraft is usually your best chance of staying alive i.e. the aircraft can fly out of situations that are outside seat limits (approx 1/10th RoD). At a wild guess, I'd say he needed to eject well before reaching the vertical down to survive... and if that is the case, and he recognised the situation, he could have again recovered by e.g. roll and pull...
NoD