I am in agreement here that seeing the VS break off so cleanly is quite disturbing. I would love to see pics of other mfg's VS failures. It is much more preferred to see (as in the MD-11 crash you mentioned) that the critical pieces are robust.
Hardly cleanly, having pulled major structure out of the rear fuselage!
Seems its a matter of damned if you do & damned if you don't with some people - what do you really want a structure to do, play strip-poker or Russian roulette?