If this is the case then it is no wonder that things went from very bad to worse awfully fast. Trying to navigate, communicate, fight a fire, a possible flight control problem and lack of O2 probably in the end, overwhelmed the F/O as they would have most other pilots trying to fly and land a crippled 747 bearing in mind he was effectively in a “single pilot operation”.
I'm not sure, we're talking about a 6000hr plus pilot here. Sure, he was very low time in type, but he probably came from another heavy at UPS. And an airplane is an airplane, you still do profile calculations the same way, and you still need to slow down for landing.
I think the environment was so harsh that it made even simple tasks like switching frequencies impossible. That is very worrying. When you take this into account, then you realize he could not see the FMC, could not see the MCP, and certainly could not look out the window. Bearing that in mind, he did an incredible job of getting so close to almost landing on the first attempt.
The possibility of the O2 failing is quite disturbing as well. The crew bottles are all located in the right side, I believe in front of the forward lower lobe cargo door. They are not in the main deck, but the oxygen lines certainly run by the side-walls to get up to the flight deck.
From an engineering perspective, I guess it is good to have them down low and all in the same place. But everything in aviation has backups, should they all be grouped together? Maybe a little redundancy is in order with separate systems for CA and FO.