I wonder why they were using autopilot on takeoff.
I was informed of this by a retired F-16 pilot who now is an MD-11 driver for FedEx. He said during one of his training session, he was working with the captian, one of the senior FedEx pilots, they spent 45 minutes trying to get the computers programmed correctly for a particular flight. When in exasperation he exclaimed, "Damn it! Why don't we just fire this bird up, and FLY it to where we're going?" The senior PIC just looked at him with absolute incredulity like he had three heads.
The fact of the matter is that except private aircraft, nobody does a whole lot of flying these days (at least not commercially).
The connations of autopilot are incorrect, however, in that more properly it was the flight control computer (FCC) that is part of the flight control system (FCS) that induced the control inputs for 30o pitch up. This is really no different than the G-limit FCS in the -16; regardless of pilot control inputs the FCS will NOT allow given inputs to overstress the airframe. The -16 is inherently unstable and without the FCC continuously monitoring all aspects of the flight aerodynamics, the air craft would be immensely difficult to control; essentially the FCC is doing 95% of the work.
The B-2 is even worse in that regard (much much worse); without a functioning FCC the B-2 is essentially uncontrollable.
It was a ‘flight computer’ not an autopilot. Apparently an automatic control system that helps fly the plane.