This is in reply to ORAC's message of 13 Aug.
I believe he was referring to the American Airlines DC-10 accident at ORD in 1979 or so.
The pitch bar on the HSI normally commands
V2+10kts. With the loss of an engine, The pitch bar commands V2. The Captain followed
the commands as he was trained to do, and the left wing stalled, since the slats had retracted with the loss of hydraulics resulting in the crash. Subsequent simulator studies proved that if V2+10 had
been maintained, the aircraft would have been flyable!
Unbelievably, the procedure remained that the Flight Directer MUST be on for T/O, with
the expectation, that if a similar event were to occur, one was expected to ignore the pitch bar command and fly "through" the
bar! Talk about being a "slave" to the automatics!
EBD