Craig Berland wrote:

Oh my...Oh my      average decent of 12,000 ft per minute.  Caused me to take 2 deep breaths.

The airplane broke up at a speed higher than 412KTS (Mach 0.62) in a steep dive.  400KTS is about 40,000 FPM.  In a steep dive, the descent rate would be a significant fraction of that.  As scary as the average descent rate is, the terminal rate was several times higher.

While we are talking scary, think about the following scenario:

The pitot tube is blocked due to icing.  The windshield may be iced over as well, blocking all outside references even if the airplane does break out into VMC.

The airplane is descending, causing the indicated airspeed to decrease (the difference between the increasing static pressure at lower altitudes and the "high pressure" air trapped in the pitot system is becoming less and less).

The pilot pushes the nose down making the dive steeper and decreasing the ground speed reported by the GPS.  The decreasing ground speed correlates with the decreasing indicated airspeed.  Even the unwinding altimeter could be interpreted as a stalled airplane in a descent by someone focused on a stall as the main problem.

Can an average pilot assess the situation with enough confidence to overcome all their training and cut the power and pull up when everything is pointing to a stall or an imminent stall?  Can an average pilot do that in less time than it took you to read this post?

Regards,

Hamid