If I'm remembering the details of the case correctly, it turns out he did overreact and that did cause the tail to fail: Certainly the tail did fail, and the pilot's input caused it.

The important part and the part that has been noted above is the NTSB's (and the industry's) focus on not blaming the pilot but figuring out why the situation turned out the way it did, what factors allowed it to happen, and how things could be changed to insure the same chain of events doesn't keep occurring.

(Again if I recall correctly), It was the confluence of a few different events compounding each other and resulting
in the accident:

One factor was the airline company sim training on recovery from upsets. Basically the pilot going through the training could come away learning entirely the wrong lesson. The simulation was hardwired so that the pilots' inputs were disregarded until the plane was in an upset and then the pilot took over. Pilots unfortunately seemed to learn that control inputs before the upset (which were ignored) affected the outcome, so they might randomly use large control inputs which were unrealistically ignored in the sim. Pilots also came out of training with an exaggerated expectation of wake turbulence because they were unable to control the plane during the early part of the upset.

An additional problem is that simulators are based from data gathered during aircraft testing and represents the normal flight envelope of the craft. Using the simulator
outside this regime can result in aircraft responses which do not simulate the actual aircraft responses.

Another issue was the way the limits of the rudder pedals were handled between different revs of the A300. Like the steering wheel of a car the rudder pedals require less and less input to be effective as speed increases. To prevent overstress on the airframe, the mfr will somtimes shorten the distance you can physically move the rudder pedals. Another way to achieve this effect is to change the ratio of rudder pedal movement to actual rudder movement (at cruise speed, a given movement of the rudder pedal will result in a smaller rudder movement than at low speeds). The mfr changed from one scheme to the other between A300 models and additionally lightened the amount of force needed to move the pedals.

All this added up to a pilot making the same rudder inputs and getting a vastly different rudder response depending on the revision of the A300 they were flying.

Finally, I believe there was concern with pilots' understanding of the V_A speed (one of many V_* speeds that the mfr provides in the aircraft's operation manual). V_A is the maximum aircraft speed at which you can jam one of the flight controls to its stops and keep the plane in one piece. Most pilots the NTSB surveyed didn't realize that this only applied to a single maneuver/single control input. Putting the rudder pedal to the stops back and forth repeatedly, even under V_A would allow the energy to build and eventually cause the airframe to break up.

Full NTSB report: http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/A...

I think the NTSB reports are fantastic reading for anyone interested in the failure modes of people and machines as well as how to really approach and investigate difficult problems.