But Lonewolf, look at the way the NTSB wrote it. Yes, they said "simultaneously," but then they put "aft cyclic" first before saying "down collective." I, for one, find the wording of that phrase curious. It's like they know that during the autorotation entry, the aft cyclic input is as important, if not more so, than lowering the collective. But who knows.
And Hughes, you're not missing something. We've heard over and over in this thread from people who claim that the first response to an engine failure is "LOWER COLLECTIVE!!" with a kind of "oh yeah" addition of "maintain attitude" as if the latter part isn't as important as the prior. And that's fine...up at altitude where there's plenty of time to sort things out. But we don't always have the luxury of time. The "Mosby" pilot didn't.
I think there are three reasonable scenarios for the "Mosby" crash.
1. When the engine quit, the pilot uttered either one or two or three four-letter words as he rapidly dumped the collective, just as he was trained to do and just as Thomas Coupling suggests. This probably bunted him over into a 40 - 50 degree nose-down attitude. In the remaining three of the five seconds left in the flight, I'd bet that he had the cyclic back in his gut, but it was largely ineffective and only got the nose back up to 40 degrees before impact.
2. When the engine quit, maybe the pilot did actually panic and freeze, and did nothing with the controls for the remaining five seconds which probably seemed very short to him. Hey, I've seen it happen! Pilots freeze up! And it would explain why the ship impacted the ground on a reverse heading to the initial. If he did nothing to any of the controls, tail rotor thrust would've yawed the thing around as it plummeted to the ground at a 40-45 degree angle.
3. When the engine quit, he knew he was boned and that it was all going to come out...the lack of preflight, the poor planning, the texting with his girlfriend...the girlfriend herself (and wouldn't his wife be surprised to hear about that!). So maybe he just said, "Goodbye, cruel world!" and rode 'er in with a feeling of intense resignation and despair.
I don't know. I *do* know that if he merely dumped the collective first, as so many here seem to suggest, then he sealed his own fate.