wrote in message
...

Because they believed the air speed indicator that was lying through
it's teeth.


Or maybe they continued to doubt it after the ice cleared?

The report didn't try too hard to reconstruct what they might have
believed, beyond recounting similar incidents. The pilots do appear to
have interpreted what they saw differently and acted without
coordination. The Flight Data Recorder didn't capture all their
displays. The report mentions that pilots fly their mental perception
of the situation.

AFAICT they assumed they still had adequate speed and lift and didn't
understand why the instruments showed them rapidly descending although
they had applied full power and pulled the nose slightly up.
Apparently that aircraft just mushes down flat when it stalls. They
had trouble controlling roll but not pitch.

My guess is that they assumed from the abnormally high air temperature
in the top of the storm that there might be strong vertical air
currents and may have believed they were caught in a turbulent
downdraft. The voice recording reveals mainly confusion.
jsw