The accident looks like a combination of a few factors, of
course, strong winds is one of them, and likely the main one. The
hard landing, then bouncing back into the air, and then hitting
hard on the nose gear are tell-tale signs of strong winds, likely
in an opposing direction (headwind). The wind speed at Chiba city
near Tokyo Narita had a maximum wind speed record of 27.6 m/s
during the accident time.
Looking at the aircraft's nose going down rapidly, this may be
due to two possible factors, one natural and one human. Natural
wise there might have been a microburst occurring that pushed the
aircraft's nose downwards. Most of the time this happens in
thunderstorms. There is a sudden, updraft, then a downdraft/loss of
lift, then another updraft.
Second scenario would be that the pilots counter the updraft
encountered during what seems to be an aborted landing attempt, and
as the speed of the aircraft is low, the updraft might cause a low
altitude stall, hence the pilots push the column forward, not
knowing that there is combination downdraft, perhaps that
manifested, although there was not any thunderstorm in the
vicinity, that pushed the aircraft's nose hard over, causing the
front gear to hit the ground.
Cartwheeling occurred when there is loss of lift on a wing or
severe wind shear, however at the time the nose gear hit the
ground, there is perhaps little chance that the aircraft would
remain in control, and cartwheeling off the runway would very
likely be a natural incident.
Do note that the aircraft however, did not seem to encounter
tail strike that caused the fire, but a cartwheeling effect
resulting in the contact of the left wing with the ground and
caused the initial blaze.
We wait for the official reports to see more about it.
Personally as a aviation student presently I do love the DC-10
series a lot.
Exactly...