I acquired a copy of the accident report last year as part of my search to find out more about my wife's father, 1Lt. Karl Klein, the NAV on that mission. Thanks to John Conner and Bob Daley for providing much information so that I could find people that knew Karl. We got some very nice photos and information on him. See my post towards the top of this tread.
Without spouting the report verbatim, it states the Primary Cause as "Undetermined", with the Probable Cause as operator error, with the pilot putting the aircraft into an attitude from which it could not recover. It lists Possible Contributing Cause as vertigo from night low level conditions and operator error from inadvertently actuating the elevator down trim and not realizing this in time to recover. There are a lot of things redacted in this area of the report, however there are also photos of the B-47 and C-130 control yokes and a photo of the trim tab with 5 degrees of down trim applied. I was also told that, as part of the investigation, a crew went up to recreate this scenario (at higher altitude). They could not recover to level flight within the stated altitude. If I have said too much let me know and we can delete this post.
Sandy, I will send you a copy of the accident report as soon as I get a chance to make one. Send me your mailing address - you have my email. I also have Pete Fisher's contact info if you still need it.
