[Chainmail]

Yeah, sure. The pilot's rate of descent was too fast and he bounced when he hit and then the plane landed on its front landing gear leg and then broke it - the pilot didn't shut the throttle off.

You can hear the engine going at high thrust when he punched out.

Brain lock.

[Paal Gulli]

"...The pilot's rate of descent was too fast and he bounced when he hit and then the plane landed on its front landing gear leg and then broke ..."

Except that wasn't what happened. It wasn't anywhere near an excessive rate of descent, especially not for an airframe meant to be slammed onto a carrier deck with impunity. I've seen Cessna 150s with a soloing student pilot at the controls pranged on harder than that, and nothing broke.

All objects will tend to rotate about their center of gravity. The CG of most airplanes is somewhere over the main wing. When the thrust from the front duct failed, and with the aft duct still working normally, the dissymmetry of thrust caused the empenage to pitch up, the airframe to rotate about its CG, and the nose to be driven down and into the tarmac.

The nose gear broke because the nose pitched down abruptly and struck the ground while the main gear were not on the ground. The nose gear wasn't designed to support the full weight of the airplane at such an unusual angle, and it failed.

It all started with inadequate or uncontrolled thrust coming from the forward duct. Nothing the pilot could do to cause or correct it.