Reply #206: possibly, but not likely

[MajorChode]

If the engine had problems, it wouldn't cause him to simply nose dive even if it failed completely because he would have recognized it immediately and selected a glide angle that would keep him from stalling. You have plenty of time to react before that happens.

From the NTSB report, it sounded to me as if he had started to make steep turns in order to try and correct back onto the ILS. Making > standard rate turns in IMC is a recipe for death. What can happen is you can quickly find yourself in a very steep bank (90 degrees or so) or you can even find yourself upside down. When faced with such an unusual attitude, sometimes pilots will panic trying to recover. If you find yourself in a steep climb and either in or rapidly approaching a stall, the recovery procedure is to apply max power while you lower the nose and straighten the wing. If a stall occurs under such conditions, the chances of it developing into a spin are extremely high, and then you have a different set of recovery procedures. If you find yourself in a steep dive, the recovery is to chop power, level the wings, and pull the nose up. Instrument pilots should practice those recovery procedures on a regular basis, but many don't. If he had picked the wrong recovery procedure, or just flat out panicked it could have caused the accident. Getting into a spin at low altitude almost always results in death anyway, even for the most proficient of pilots.