[ncallaway]

This doesn't strike me as correct.

The plane was traveling fast enough that the strain on the air control surfaces meant pilots weren't able to manually trim the plane back into alignment.

The only way to overcome those forces was to use the electronic motors to adjust the alignment of the rear stabilizer trim. However, those motors also are disabled with the stab trim cutoff switches.

After the fact simulations confirmed that such forces could well have prevented manual control.

See prior discussion and news articles here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19573893 and https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...