Flap trap
With regards to comments about flaps and elevator effectiveness. A couple of notches of flap was regularly used during manoeuvers to increase rate of turn/decrease radius of turn. There was no problem in the use of flap during normal manoeuver speeds. The only problem came at M0.9 when the nose would pitch down and you could wreck the elevator controls by continuing to pull. The normal mistake was to have finished manoeuvring or run out of a fight with a notch or two of flap selected. At M0.9 you would soon realise that you still had flap selected!!!!!!!!!!!! Simply relaxing back pressure on the stick and raising the flaps solved the problem.
The accident aircraft would not have been anywhere near this speed.