Looking at the weather conditions in the area at the time and what is known (in the public arena), my money is going on a simple cloud burst followed by structural failure

These are very common at this time of year in that part of the world and can quite easily drag any aircraft up at a good 5 or 6G. This followed by a nasty microburst downdraft could rip the aircraft to pieces if it wasn't in tip top condition and lets be honest here, the A320-200 has been around for donkeys years and aircraft maintenance in some parts of the world is scheduled by accountants not engineers
Lizzie, unless the USAF has started sailing aircraft carriers, you will probably find that that F14 was in fact a F15C from Bitburg in sausage land

Guffer, "quote .... When properly prepared it could go vertical and then supersonic.....although the prep for such a stunt would degrade the exoskeleton airframe which thus limited it's service life and was it's eventual demise"
What makes you think that ??
I'm asking because I spent 3 1/2 years of my life taking them off the squadron, stripping them down to the shell, fixing anything that needed doing / upgrading then rebuilding / testing the aircraft and sending it back out to the flight line so the piggin jockeys can break / bend them again

LC0112G The Streak Eagle was a stripped down, tuned up one off airframe and had very little in common with the USAF's F15's. Also, no way on earth could it do mach 1.4 @ sea level

In fact the F15 is shite at anything above mach at low level due to the wing loading. That's why it was common practice during exercises for the lightning pilots to lead them down low if they wanted to have a fight

That time to height record was set up in response to the soviets Mig 25 (go faster version) in the good old cold war tradition of my
dick aeroplane is better then yours

The time to height record also used a stepped climb profile to get there which is very similar to how the lightning got up there so fast.
Standing on your tail over the threshold is for air shows / the public only
unless the boss isn't looking 