Originally Posted by Dozy
That's one possibility, as is Franzl's suggestion regarding 'tunnel vision' on roll - but as always I'd urge caution on terms of reading too much into things. The fact is that we cannot know for certain what was going through his head, and that fact is as immutable as it is frustrating.
Dozy,
Remember that whatever Bonin was doing, it was logical to him to be doing that at that time. He was not a stupid person. You don't make it into a cockpit if you are stupid. (foolish is different
). The problem is that our hind sight bias blinds us to understanding these perfectly logical steps that Bonin took.
The art of hand flying an aircraft has certain elements to it that are common across a wide range of aircraft. Sometimes by looking in great detail at the problems an accident pilot faced, we can begin to understand why, at the detail level, he did what he did. This can be the key to understanding the larger context. Is it a perfect technique? No, of course not, but when your analysis of what was done begins to make sense, then you have to be getting close to what must have happened.
Please do not trot out that over-repeated phrase of Bonin's that he had been at maximum nose up for some time. The flight conditions had changed considerably from when he first took contol and he must have made 200 to 500 small decisions about handling details of his control problems before he made that statement. To try to apply that statement to the beginning of the manual control period is reeeeaaaally a long stretch. You can just about see when he implemented that decision, and it was much later from what I can see.