[Icare9]

TTM: Thanks for the links, I'll try and breathe new like into previous postings and see what shakes out..

I can't do much except suggest you look at what can be determined from the various reports.

Weather. It's reported as snowing, so much that it takes the Luftwaffe 30 mins to drive there from Plauen. Is that an unusual length of time really? If it was a blizzard, then eyewitnesses aren't really going to see much air activity until it's on top of them.
Similarly, for the bombers, wouldn't heavy snow clouds hamper target marking, yet that doesn't seem to be so. So what was the weather situation?

Witnesses. Assuming that it is likely there were snow clouds, they could have been below 10,000 feet, explaining why crews reported what they saw to that level. Dropping out of the stream, a burning aircraft is bound to be shedding debris, from cannon or flak hits etc, plus the force of the slipstream, crew kicking out hatches etc ... Another attack or simply a fuel tank or engine falling off could have been seen as an "explosion" sufficient that the bomber isn't capable of returning...

Ground witnesses state it appeared (out of the snowstorm) burning fiercely yet they don't remark that it was falling in pieces after a low mid air explosion, but almost as if still able to be a "controlled" crash in (perhaps) avoiding the village. The debris field of 300 metres might match a low angle impact and skid, shedding components as it decelerated.
It might be argued that the crew died in avoiding crashing onto the village, killing many residents....
The bomb load was also intact and had to be defused, so any "explosion" seen had to be fuel or other parts separating, such as wing, engine etc.

For Jack Knight to have been found by the wreck indicates that he, like the rest of the crew were still aboard. If the aircraft were fatally unstable, spinning uncontrollably, perhaps they couldn't get out, but there was no comment from other bomber crews that the aircraft seen was out of control (although they may have thought it was a "goner" so didn't need to be too graphic). It could be then, that no order to abandon the aircraft was given, the pilot assuming he had sufficient control to crash land successfully.
There should have been sufficient time in descending from 17,000 feet for at least some of the crew to have baled out. I don't think he would have landed by parachute close to the wreck unless the altitude was quite low, plus I would have thought some remark about the parachute would have been noted...

Whether anyone can make a sensible scenario, out of what appear to be some conflicting accounts, may not be possible.