Originally Posted by maajam
what kind of seat-of-the-pants sensation the pilots were experiencing with a 10,000fpm descent? Were they in a "steady-state" of some kind with no sensations?
...it would seem that there was very little wind noise on the flight deck given the lack of forward speed.
Once stabilized in the 10,000 fpm descent, they were experiencing ~1 g. Since the aircraft was generating much less lift with the wings and much more drag with the fuselage (a form of lift since their velocity vector was pointed very downward) the direction of the 1 g would be biased off toward the direction of any bank, but because the aircraft was still generating some lift with the wings, the 1 g vector did not point to the center of the earth. So 60 degrees of bank may have felt like ~25 degrees of lean.
There was a leaked statement regarding noise level in the cockpit. Apparently the airflow around the cockpit was very tubulent and generated significant airstream noise. Probably the genesis of PF's comment about having some "crazy speed".