Correction?
Takata,
Quote: His reaction was immediate, he was not asleep, and he should have been fooled by something.
Do you not mean, "he should [B]not[B] have been fooled by something?
A thought has crossed my mind, bearing in mind that we are talking about iced up pitots, maybe static systems, could it be that their altimeters were not unwinding like one would imagine, with a 10,000 fpm descent, and that their VSIs were also not responding to the descent? Possibly even showing a climb, when they were actually descending.
As I've mentioned earlier, a prolonged nose down input should have brought them out of the stall, but why would you do that, if there was no indication that the sea was getting closer...