mwallen
The first thing you need to ascertain is whether or not the ethernet port is fried, so break into apboot and type:
apboot> dhcp
If the AP cannot get an IP address, and the cable is known to be working (i.e. verify if possible with a known working AP), then the missing OS issues is secondary.
If you get an IP via DHCP, the next step is to make sure the AP sees the controller. It will do this via ADP, DNS, DHCP options etc. If unsure, at a minimum, make sure the AP can ping the controller IP, do this from the apboot prompt.
If you have an IP address and can ping the controller IP, in 99% of the cases it's going to recover itself (my guess, personally, after lightning strike is that you will find the DHCP doesnt work and the data pairs are blown). You can test the discovery from the apboot, assuming there is no serverip and master set, by typing
apboot> tftpboot
this should trigger the AP to try and discover the controller and boot up off TFTP. After doing so, it would try to download the image, save to flash and reboot.
there are other ways to do this, but the above process should work fine where there is an active controller present.
regards
jeff