[Cold Heat]

Not much, I believe they are referring to the aft thrusters. It happened as the craft was losing control.

[brityank]

I'll try to find it, but I thought that the front thrusters had also fired trying to correct the yaw from the left-wing drag. I do remember that both of the Right rear thrusters fired, but I don't quite understand how they would swing the left side forward and mitigate the excess drag.

[Paul Ross]

There are a number of video shots which showed that the ship (over Arizona) had already slewed almost 90-degrees sidewise, and was descending with its left-most wing first. This is odd, since the drag was the greatest on this wing. You would think it would have caused the shuttle to rotate around the other way, and lead with its right wing. At any rate, at Mach 18.5 the ship's vertical stabilizer could not withstand such pressures (taking the full blast against it's side) long before snapping off.