Chris
I am unsure the authority of the VS v/v Directional Stability at fifty knots forward, and 160 down. I am not persuaded that the VS would have made a difference at these conditions, whether on or off. You picture me as fixated, and that's fine, but I have not rejected any possibility. You, like most, see an adamant argument, and think it obsessive. At the very least, you take offense and immediately know all other possibilities are bunk, to this person. You are of course wrong. No one knows what happened. Not yet, and until the findings are sussed and confirmed, it is at least as illogical to reject a theory as to embrace its corollary. Objectivity can wear a tuxedo, or a shopcoat. Until BEA abandoned its jargon that described their very own opinion as bunk, and to this day, people picture this a/c as somehow in control and dogged by bad luck. That is the puffery of a partisan, or his "Friends".
I am a follower of Murphy, but did he not also understand sarcasm??