This was his first flight without his instructor in more than a month. Staff members at Kennedy's George magazine and business associates say that Kennedy's injury was still causing him considerable pain and that he was limping noticeably. Kennedy's trip to Martha's Vineyard that night would be a flight of what-ifs. Hard left rudder to straighten out the plane - and wincing pain. Then Kennedy might have looked back at his wife and her sister, chatting and catching up with each other as he flew the Saratoga northeast, and he might have turned back.
Pilots do that all the time.
Graveyard spirals result when pilots become visually incapacitated over water and have no reference point to level their wings. A wing banks, the plane loses altitude from the loss of lift, and instead of leveling the wings first to restore straight and level flight, the pilot panics and pulls back sharply on the control yoke. An experienced pilot, acting quickly, can recover only by leveling the wings with the aileron controls, applying rudder in the opposite direction of the spiral to restore straightforward flight and reducing power before slowly pulling out. Good rudder movements are vital - they are needed to help compensate for the momentum built up by the bank and dive. In a right spiral, which Kennedy was almost surely in, active and sustained movements of left rudder would be essential.