When my 340 crashed on a winter day in 1987, they said it was in a spiral dive, described as a vertical barrel roll with 6 g's and no chance of recovery once established. Vertical speed similar to this accident, speed at impact in excess of 300 kts (estimated by one guy at 360) and wreckage pieces about the same size as the small ones published in today's report.
When I went to the accident site the following morning and saw the small pieces lying around in the wheat field, I assumed they had already hauled off the big ones. They said "no sir, that's all we found. That's why we told you on the phone last night that we couldn't confirm the tail number." Most of it was buried, the backhoe dug a hole next to the engines so we could see the depth to which they penetrated, which was just over 10' into frozen ground.
JMac and Richard Collins went out to FSI's sim in Wichita (where Bruce Landsberg worked at the time and helped set up the experiments) to see if they could duplicate the crash, and wrote an article about it in the magazine. Bottom line is that if you ever find yourself in a lateral upset in a twin Cessna, pull power to idle, drop approach flaps and gear and hope like hell you didn't wait too long. You may lose some gear doors and bend some metal, but if things work just right you may live to tell about it.
I can't say whether that advice holds true for other twins, or even slick singles, but it might be worth knowing if the cheese gets binding some dark cold night.
Plane lost 6800' in 60 seconds. Ice?
