I'm quite sure that SAS did not refer to the engines in his comment, rather to the cockpit environment, just for clarity.
The A-320 entered the water at a very smooth 150kts GS (great airmanship), friction with water being quite higher than with air, yet the NTSB/SNECMA/CFM were able to find consistent "organic" remains inside the engines and nacelles.
The S-76 apparently impacted the shallow water from 700' (?) with almost no forward velocity vector and was not even completely submerged.
99% of bird strikes involving windshield/chin bubbles failures have a considerable amount of gory/bloody/feathery stuff in the cockpit and do not require a CSI style investigation (of the type so visible on TV these days) to determine there was such an impact.
Just recently there was a bird strike reported on a 139 radome, and even though the bird did not actually penetrate the internal liner there were very visible remains, aircraft was @ cruise speed.
Last edited by tottigol; 2nd Mar 2009 at 20:05.