You are correct, Dozy, the crew never said that. I was being sarcastic about the system design that "protects" hapless pilots from getting into trouble. Do we have "pinball wizards" or real pilots flying these things?
An "aggressive" design would have used whatever the hell was causing the stall warning to sound to move the nose of the jet down!!! It would have some limits regarding mach, but the main operational function at the time would be to break an impending stall. "We can worry about mach later", says HAL.
The AoA traces show a fairly smooth increase, then we have what looks like a lotta noise. Could be electrical noise, could be effects from being on the bottom of the ocean for two years, but I cannot fathom the vanes/cones moving that much due to basic engineering practices of mechanical dampening and the inertia of the probes themselves. In any case, the "system" can use many techniques to "smooth" the data that is provided the main FCS confuser. Talk with me about data reduction on a test system that had crappy electrical wiring, and took us weeks to figure out the problem.
I am still not convinced that the crew had clear warnings and indications of the situation. Given that the line pilot has not been presented the combination of events and such, I can understand a bit of confusion. But in the end, I see the claims about enhanced safety and "protections" and then I see a situation where all the engineering/laws/protections didn't help at all.