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Yes, we do agree, Lurker. In fact, had I not been short of time this morning I was going to comment on that very fact.

I think that the fall was ballistic with a very minor variation from the various drag factors... and perhaps a little lift in random directions. The minor forces from lift and drag are small compared to the momentum of the crippled aircraft.

The nose did fall ballistically... but the mass of the nose and hence its momentum (only ~12% (est.) of the momentum of the main mass of the fuselage) would be more quickly overcome by the drag. That is why it fell more closely to the initiating event.

I am curious why you feel it is necessary to postulate a aerodymanic dive when all of the evidence fits exactly with the calculated ballistic fall. Since the evidence denies a climb, the math works for a ballistic fall (initiating point, wreckage location, speeds, etc.), and there are enough unknowns to keep eveyone guessing for a long time, why ignore William of Occam's razor and invent a complex solution that doesn't fit the observed facts?

However...

Now that you have modified your "leveling out" to a 45 degree dive and dropped the idea of it being a "power dive" I can mostly agree with you. I think we can come to a middle ground where my ballistic fall is tempered with your aerodynamic fall. There is about 6 seconds of uncertainty in our data which could result in either being close to correct. What cannot fit at all is a climb of any significance which would add fall time.

One other thingb becomes clear. That is the fact that in either of our scenarios (or even that of the CIA/NTSB) the Center Wing Tank exposion as the initiating event is untenable... being that the tank was composed of LOAD BEARING (both in tension and compression) members and if they are compromised their ability to bear those loads would be extremely doubtful.

I had a thought looking at the debris field plots. The lightweight, wind driven debris form a random area near and south of where the nose came to rest. This random field is where it is because of wind and momentum if each piece. We know the velocity and vector of the wind. The momentum of each piece could be estimated. It should be possible to plot these out and find a matching average curve back to the initiating event and perhaps give us a better idea of exactly when along the flight path the fuselage opened up spilling such lightweight stuff out.

What do you think? The devil might be in the lightweight details...