Welcome to the forum azflyer.
I can certainly accept the point that going on to the final destination with an engine fire is a bad move. I think the documented account, bad move or otherwise, simply shows that we're a couple notches down on the critical meter from where the Tin Man has it. What if your options were continue to the destination or land in a "farmer's field"? I've read field landings are also dangerous.
"Pilots of twin-engine airplanes may elect to continue the flight to the nearest airport" -- (see link below)
The part I was stuck on is the "death spiral".
I was not able to find documentation suggesting that a twin engine should "dive" to put out the fire.
In the case of an engine fire, a high airspeed descent could blow out the fire. However, the weakening of the airplane structure is a major concern and
descent at low airspeed would place less stress on the airplane
The recovery from an emergency descent should be initiated at a high enough altitude to ensure a safe recovery back to level flight or a precautionary landing.
There is a lot of room for interpreting what Rusty is describing. Clearly, to me, he's going for effect, and I can't see how his words are intended to mean anything short of a movie scene with a plane nose down and spiraling about the axis of the plane's length, out of control. Those defending (even as devil's advocate only) Rusty's account paint a picture that I don't think any audience member has in mind when listening to the talk: that of a controlled, corkscrew descent -- "When initiating the descent, a bank of approximately 30 to 45°" -- and now it comes down to how scary a realistic descent is for the passengers.
That's a tough call, as context is everything. If the descent is rather gradual and the captain explains, "ladies and gentlemen, our engines and electrical system is gone and we'll now attempt a crash landing in the ocean" then that's different than a relatively steep descent, but the pilot says, "Hang on folks for a rapid descent as we blow this flame out, it's going to get rough but don't panic as this is a standard procedure; we'll be gliding nice and easy again shortly". As you point out the middle-management downplays damage, but so also will the pilot downplay any risk to the passengers. Yes, the descent would be akin to a children's rollercoaster -- an old school adult coaster such as the Cyclone of Coney Island has a 55 degree drop, barely anything by today's standards -- and with the insecurity of something being wrong with the plane, certainly there will be panic. But if we're really talking about a banking spiral as opposed to a "plummeting" war-movie spiral, and factoring in the standard practice of the procedure, and also the words of comfort from a pilot completely in control, then for Nelson to subjectively interpret the experience as a war-movie spiral where death was certain and the plane spared from impact a moment before vaporizing into the earth, implies that he was himself panicking. Some people are more vocal than others. That a woman on the plane was screaming is no worse than he quietly exaggerating the situation to himself as the NBC drama that it never was.
Nelson is in a fork:
If he fabricated the experience, then he's a loser for lying, and if the experience is real under the "banked blowout" interpretation, then he's a loser for panicking when a reasonable person with nerves of steel and a secure knowledge of the Savior would have recognized that his odds of landing unscathed were far greater than the instant death he was certain of.
