Bruce,

I believe it all boils down to who has the deepest pockets. The FAA and Boeing had the most to loose. It's easy to blame the pilots, and that is what they did!

The crew never pulled any CB’s. That was a story the FAA & Boeing put out to cover their asses on the rash of un-commanded rudder problems.
The one group that was tireless in getting to the truth was the TWA-ALPA accident guys. For months/years they poured over the data and trail of debris
from the plane’s path. They were able to show that the # 7 slat was one of the last things to depart the plane not the first as the Feds tried to sell.

Here they are at FL390 in a 727-100. The -100 was a bit better than the -200 at this altitude, but you still had to be light enough. The trouble started when the 2 axis autopilot sensed some yaw. It only has control of pitch and roll, so it starts feeding in aileron to counter the yaw caused by the bad rudder. When the control yoke is turned more than about 10 degrees the spoilers on the up aileron side begin to raise. Spoilers at FL390 is the last thing you need.

The plane starts to buffet and as more aileron is applied by the autopilot the more spoilers are added. Pretty soon the autopilot has full aileron to counter the yaw. The plane is buffeting like crazy and still yawing into a slip. Ol' Hoot sees the yoke full to one side and hits the disconnect button. The yoke snaps to level. Now the bad rudder gets the plane into a steep spiral and the nose falls down. The speed increases and so does the noise. It's so loud in the cockpit that no conversation is possible. As the plane spirals through supersonic and is heading to earth at an unbelievable speed the F/O points to the gear handle. Hoot shakes his head YES! Down goes the gear into supersonic air. 

The thing that saved Hoot and the rest of the people was the lowering of the gear. In doing so, the right main was extended so hard into supersonic air that the hydraulic line to the gear broke and system A pressure lost thus allowing the lower (bad) A system rudder to return to zero. Parts like gear doors and other pieces departed the plane as it zoomed across the countryside. When the A system hydraulic pressure went to zero something else - totally - unrelated to the first part of the event happened. The leading edge wing slats are moved by A system pressure. They are supposed to lock both up and down mechanically. On the 727's of that time almost every plane had a slat that would droop while on the ramp with A system pressure off. This 727 was a good example. The hydro-mechanical lock on the #7 slat was broken and when the gear went down into the fast air and system A pressure was lost, the slat got sucked out into the high speed air and departed the aircraft. That is why it was the last part in the trail of debris to be located not the first as the big money people tried to say.

It took several more crashes, the UAL crash in COS and the last one being the USAir 727 over PIT, before Boeing fixed the problem. Very quietly, every plane got a re-designed rudder actuator.

As an instructor in the old days doing training in the airplane, we had several problems with the rudders on the 727, but it took a bunch of crashes to force the fix.

Lou