Cazalet 33 said
How very wrong!
Sector whiteout is well known and well understood.
Read what I said. I never said there is no such thing as sector whiteout but to surmise, as Mahon and Vette did that at 1500 feet the crew suffered this optical illusion which caused them to "see" good VMC conditions, with a false horizon, and what's more, look convincingly like the entrance to McMurdo Sound is a massive, massive leap of faith that is often written as if it were a proven fact.
Whereas we all know that if you're skimming along the base of a cloud layer at 1500', with ice below you, you're pretty much going to see a wall of white regardless of whatever tricks your occipital cortex might or might not be playing.
It's astonishing how Mahon managed to explain away Brooks asking "where's Erebus/just thinking about high ground in the area" as *not* indicating alarm, but he has no problem putting forwards the optical illusion theory as if it were solid fact.
All the above is, of course, putting aside for a moment the fact they should never have descended to that level in the situation they were in in the first place.
That video you keep referring to is good entertainment for people who have no knowledge of things aeronautical, for mainly it is NZALPA propaganda.
And it's laughably invalid from a scientific point of view.
Mahon said:
In my opinion, neither Captain Collins nor First Officer Cassin nor the Flight Engineers made any error which contributed to the disaster, and were not responsible for its occurrence.
And 3-Holer said
That is NOT saying the crew was blameless, that is saying the crew did not make any error which contributed to the disaster!
I'm not sure what your point is, or why you are trying to cloud the argument with semantics, but the meaning of the above cannot possibly be anything other that Mahon felt the crew were blameless. He was subsequently quoted as such ad infinitum while he was still alive. And this is how Mahon is quoted to this day - by the media, and also the likes of Holmes, Dunne, and Williamson who tried to get the crew formally exonerated in Parliament.