Charles and Avman,
Originally Posted by Charles
..... the tail of the plane possibly hit the summit of a hill first. That could explain what we see : the center of the fuselage broke apart and falling like a dead leaf on the ground, for example.
Originally Posted by Avman
If it was in it's [sic] final approach configuration it would have been in a nose up attitude and would thus have impacted terrain tail first.
Certainly worth thinking about.
The craft has some considerable forward momentum at 140 kts (nose up or not). If the tail hits, the nose comes down. And stays, and slides. You don't lose 140 kts forward by converting it suddenly into rotation.
The pictures of the wing-box/rump from behind show the trees and no sliding trace, so assuming a tail strike at 140 kts airspeed this part would have had to have bounced into the air from this initial impact and come down again. I don't quite picture that. My intuition still tells me that with a tail strike and 140kts forward and still flying there is going to be a lengthy trace on the ground; which there isn't.
PBL