The obvious question, the Rudder is shown to be @ 40 degrees right in at least one photograph, and similarly positioned in another, these taken while in the sea, and after removal from the sea. In the chain of recovery, why is the rudder at such an angle?
Bearfoil,
mm43 already gave the answer to this: The RTLU stops depend on hydraulics to effectievly limit the travel of the rudder.
Obviously there was no hydraulics left in the drifting rudder.
Re fracture of vertical pick up arm: Difficult to say but depending of the degree of freedom in the hinges in the vertical plane the vertical load might just have concentrated on the pickup arm first.
Lateral defensive rods:
Yes they were torn off their mounts. But this does not necessarily mean the force was excerted laterally. Could also have happened from vertical force. As they are angled ~45° that wouldn't make much difference in the damage pattern of the rods/mounts.
Edit: Also the fact that both aft lateral rods were torn of the spar is an indication for some kind of symmetrical force. Otherwise only one should have been torn off as the aft mounting structure was not completely torn off the VS.
/Edit
Mounting lugs:
A rotation of the VS around a lateral axis i.e. tilting to the back or front could result in the same effect: shearing of the lug. And it only happened to the first lug, not the other ones.
If it would have been lateral force there is a high probability all three sets would have sheared. And the shearing surfaces of the two sides of the female should look differently: One broken more in torsion, the other more in strain.
So for me a longitudinal tiliting of the VS seems to match the damage pattern of the mounting lug(s) much better than the lateral displacement.
I still haven't found any (at least for me) convincing evidence of a lateral break up of the VS.
Have a look at the deformation of the ribs in the VS. They are deformed vertically which would also match a longitudinal tilting of the VS.