Lyman, I'm referring to the position on the artificial horizon from 0, not the cruise pitch angle. We've gone through this a dozen times or more, but the autopilot did not induce the climb. There was a nose-up trend before the PF took manual control, but it was gradual, minimal and entirely consistent either with the autopilot regaining cruise pitch, or the aircraft attempting to regain cruise pitch via the trim setting.
The abnormal pitch angles that followed were entirely a result of manual sidestick inputs made by the PF.
Gums, our Francophone colleagues have asserted that "crazy" in this sense refers to high speed, not low speed. The PF talks about a sense or feeling of "crazy speed", and he does not refer to the instruments.
Rudderrudderrat - interesting. However I think turbulence had to have been involved even if the rudder trim was slightly off, because there was a pitch component to it. I know that yaw inputs tend to bring the nose down, but not 3.5 degrees off where it was supposed to be, surely? The estimated side slip trace looks to be in excess of what could be expected if the rudder was out of trim in calm air, no?