I realize that this doesn't actually apply to the Tempest, but the phenom still exists out there...
My brother is a pilot in commercial airliners, 737's now, and he described one of their safety deals for higher speed descending back in the 727's...they can't get going too fast because the inner part of the wing will lose lift, and the center of lift moves back toward the rear of the wing. Also because the wings are swept back, the center of lift also moves out toward the thinner part of the outer wing ends...that part creates more lift than the inner "thicker" part of the wing as the plane approaches the sonic barrier (which is slower at higher alts due to the thinner air). So when that happens, the lift being generated is behind the center of gravity of the plane, like picking the plane up by the wingtips would tip it forward, and the plane does a sudden nose-down pitch that is nearly unrecoverable. It is known as "mach tuck".
Sounds like the Tempest might be a plane that has some kind of similar bad habits at high speeds...high speed stall of the wing, especially with the high wing loading of the later war planes, would cause a sudden drop of the nose...a sudden loss of the upward force on the front of the plane...
Also, the original wing/tail arrangements had the wing producing upward lift and the horizontal stabilizers producing down thrust to keep the planes level. Later on, they discovered that they could move the center of gravity further back in the plane and use the horizontal stabilizers to produce additional lift, adding to the total lift rather than canceling out some of the lift produced by the wing (up + up vs. up + down). If you suddenly lost the wing's upward lift at high speed, and didn't stall the horiztonal stabilizer at the same time, you would suddenly have a big upward lift on the tail with no lift of the wings to counter, and you'd go nose down, or tail up and over. At least the Physics says it can happen.
Oh, does sound pretty funny too!
