Oh man, that picture is some scary stuff.
I can't really fault them for not attempting to retract the flaps - considering they barely got into the air in their current config.
If the mechanisms were in the correct location, but the physical flaps were gone - there would have been zero indication anyways - so they wouldn't have known.
As speed increased, I'm guessing the lift asymmetry became more deadly.
That is seriously scary to look at.
