I wonder how many pilots with over 200 hours and a multi think it was shot down.
Any pilot can easilly understand the zoom climb. Fwd section blown off, CG goes 20 feet aft of wing. Nothing else but a zoom climb would result.
Wing stalls. Engines revert to idle (per Boeing). No climb. Certainly not 3400 ft. Every pilot I have talked to has said "no climb." My father was an Air Force aircraft accident investigator... he said "no climb".
Other proof. TWA800 performed an almost perfect ballistic fall from 13,800 ft. It splashed down exactly where ballistic computers calculated it would in exactly the amount of time it should have. Had there been a zoom climb, it would have take more than 8 seconds to climb... an additional 8 seconds to return to 13,800 adding 16 seconds to the flight that the radar show conclusively was not there. TWA800 would have had to fly for 59 seconds if there had been a zoom climb... TWA800 was in the Atlantic Ocean between 38 and 43 seconds after the initiating event.