That doesn’t explain a hard over roll like that though.

Maybe it came across like that, but I’m dead serious. At least towards the end of the H stint on active duty they were poorly maintained (to no fault of the hard working maintainers - just lack of money), beat to death and worn out.

I know what you mean, I've been flying these things for 16 years. You're right, they're tired, but I think there's a difference between expecting an HSI to fail and expecting a catastrophic failure causing a Class A. The Air Force flies a lot of parts to failure, but I'm not walking out to every airplane expecting it to crash. I think there's something else to blame here besides just being an old, tired, poorly maintained airplane. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not one to jump on the aging warhorse bandwagon until I see some facts that point in that direction. At this point we don't have any.

Fair enough, I am very curious to see the AIB when it comes out; hopefully there is something we can all learn from it when it does.

Agreed.
And let's hope... that until then... the unnecessary and unprofessional public speculation stops.

No, it was an H, #65-0968

It's possible. There are systems in the prop intended to prevent a prop going into flat pitch in flight, but like anything, they're not infallible. I know of at least one instance where a prop has gone below the low-pitch stop in flight.

As noted, it was an H, not an E. True, neither the E nor the H had autofeather, but they both have negative torque sensing which will drive the prop toward feather until the negative torque condition is alleviated. It's not autofeather, but it does dramatically reduce the drag of a windmilling prop.

And the asymmetrical flap protection is not foolproof. If the flap drive separates between the 90 degree gearbox and the flap drive screw, it's outside of the asymmetrical flap sensor. This exact failure happened to a co-worker bout 6 months ago.

*shrug*
It's not like we're on the news telling millions or somebody in the chain of command taking punitive action based upon speculation. What's happening here doesn't hurt anybody. In a month the truth will come out and people will either look like geniuses or asses and likely it'll be forgotten by the majority anyway. Discussions revolving around safety shouldn't be stifled and are most certainly not unprofessional.