As one who formerly earned his living by being able to milk the last bit of performance from swept wing jet aircraft, I would like to offer the following opinion regarding the Habsheim accident.
Other than poor pre-planning, the direct cause of the accident was mismanagement of the aircraft's engines. Asseline needed to have been waking up those engines much earlier to avoid the acceleration lag. One should be gradually walking the throttles forward from idle as the ground gets nearer until arriving at a stabilized power at the desired minimum altitude.
It is quite possible that
if given direct control of the elevator, Asseline could have developed sufficient g a bit earlier to clear the trees, but in so doing, the aircraft would likely be entering a stall over the tops of the trees (but with the engines coming fully up to power). If he was good and he was lucky, he might have been able to fly out of that without losing altitude. If he was unlucky or not so good of a stick, then the accident would have been moved a bit further from the airfield. Elevator response is thus a secondary issue to the mismanagement of the engines.
The idea is to avoid having to use your superior airmanship to extricate oneself from the consequences of your inferior planning.
