Having worked on both the hardware and the software for most of IBM's tape drives, from the '60s era 2400s through the '70s 3480s, which cover the time of the Black Team, I find this story difficult to believe. On all these drives adjusting the start/stop mechanism required the engineer to be inside the enclosure with hands on the the very read head area whilst running many patterns of start/stop/rewind/fast forward. If I had felt any significant enclosure movement it would have indicated to me a major problem.