40 + degree nose attitude (I presume your reference to "down" was intended to be up for the pitch attitude but down for the resultant path vector ?)
I don't think that your observation is quite right .. although I may have missesd a subtlety in your point along the way ..
I would have to wade back through eternity to find the numbers from earlier posts but, as I recall,
(a) the aeroplane was moderately nose up in pitch attitude
(b) the ball would have looked reasonably normal-ish albeit much too nose up compared to normal flight and pitch values
(c) the flight path vector (again I can't recall the specific term for this aeroplane) was showing a steep descent ..
(d) and the two, taken together, gave an approximation of alpha .. which was the relevant 40-odd degrees measure.
That is to say, presuming that the instrument was presenting a picture, the ball indication would have been instantly obvious to any competent I/F pilot and the Commander probably (? - just my thoughts) read the ball right straight away but, with the overall bizarre situation for an airline pilot .. it was going to take him a little while to figure out just what in the blue blazes was going on and where his sidekicks had got the aeroplane to in the few minutes that he was out of the cockpit.
.. it was a great tragedy that the situation didn't give him the time he needed to
(a) figure out the story, and
(b) fix it
before the pond cut short his options.
In which case we wouldn't have this marvellously huge expanse of threads and posts on a single topic.