jmig29;
My experience tells me something very terrible happenned in cruise, that did not give the crew any reaction timing, which leads me to think maybe other "non spoken" aspects may have to be considered. Looks to me that the "ACARS automatic reports" were just the final part of the problem, when there was allready no hope left for those souls.
This has been what my experience has been saying to me all along (structural breakup due over-stressing during entry into a CB, ACARS messages recording the effects of subsquent failures, unrelated to cause), but there was simply not enough evidence to state it and so I remain uncommitted to any conclusions still. The Perpignan intact fin (we don't know what the same structure looks like however), keeps the question suspended somewhat.