Originally Posted by
scifi
For those that say he was too slow in the inverted part of the Loop, I think you are missing the point that at slow airspeeds the radius of curvature will be SMALLER. So would have helped reduce the size of the loop..
Quite so. That, like most of the points made in this thread (with the possible exception of the vehicle accident analogies) is explicitly made in the report.
Which in turn raises the interesting scenario that the pilot may have been aware of both the low apex height and airspeed, but judged that the lower than planned height loss that would result from the low apex airspeed would still allow safe completion of the loop manoeuvre.