Likely cause here is these guys were in turbulence/t-storm they never should have flown into and were trying everything, when jsut skirting the weather by 60-70 miles would’e been the right decision. Planes aren’t designed to fly through storms like the one they encountered and they should’ve changed their route.
I read that they were denied course alteration.
Back in 1958 I was running some experiments at Wright Field. One of the issues was how much bending there was in an airframe in rough weather (too much bending and the aircraft couldn't transfer heading data from the inertial guidance system to a long-range missile correctly). I rode as test engineer on a B-50, one of the last "rigid" aircraft in the Air Force's inventory. The B-47 and the B-52 airframes were far more flexible. Even the wings of the B-36 would "oilcan" in flight.
The pilot deliberately flew NEAR but not THROUGH thunderstorms so I could get my data. Even so, we bounced around quite a bit. However, I got my data, and it showed that we needed to take airframe flexure into account when aiming missiles at distant targets.