Following my invitation, Dinger speculates:
Originally Posted by DingerX
the aircraft hit, and hit hard on a rising slope. ............ The impact was severe enough that only the structurally hardest segments (tail and wing area) stayed intact for long. The wing section presumably went airborne, spraying debris, landed and slid a small distance. The "nose" -- actually more than half of the fuselage on an MD-80, and, given the number of souls on board, probably had the majority of passengers -- disintegrated from the force of the impact and the subsequent dynamics.
OK, but where is that debris from the forward fuselage? I have been looking for it in the photos too and haven't seen it. Things don't shatter so much as to become invisible. There is a debris field somewhere that we have not seen yet. Either that, or I have become selectively blind.
PBL