Plane crashed -- what happened?

"Dan Foster" wrote:
Not so sure it's necessarily plane's fault like the family and friends
seems to think -- odds in general aviation are pretty good that it's
often human error somewhere in the chain.

Sorry for the loss of your friend.

Could have been just about any of the things you mention, or a
combination of several; we may never know, of course.

Still, if I were betting, my money would be on simple spatial
disorientation as the cause. Very easy to lose one's bearings over
water at night, even when it's good VMC.

Even over land, one can get out of shape from visual illusions very
easily. The only time I ever came close to killing myself in an
airplane was in the pattern at a rural airport on a nice, VMC night.
Turning base, I looked at the airspeed indicator a moment and, when I
looked outside again, got a false horizon off some ground lights and
quickly overbanked the airplane. By the time I realized I had a
problem--just a few seconds--I was within a couple hundred feet of the
ground in a 60-deg. bank and descending fast. I had a moment of near
panic as I realized I couldn't find the real horizon. The attitude
indicator saved the day--er, night--but a few more seconds delay would
have put me in the ground.
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM