HazelNuts39
Thank you for your response. I must say that on short notice, your description of events in defense of forward separation at water impact is most elegant. It is scholarly and compelling.
Before I respond, I wish to thank you for sharing your experience here. This device is something new to democracy, and will at least keep interest in important matters alive, not necessarily subject to the mundane lurching from screed to screed that is a legacy from poor reporting in the past.
BEA explains 447's water entry aspect as "En Ligne de Vol", with a port yaw. This is a challenge to logic; the description goes on to describe a left wing low. A left bank, slight Pitch up, but 'In line of flight'? I won't have it. The description is meant to convey a Point of View, but framed as a Finding of fact.
You have relied on evidence, and bravo. However, the evidence you submit is equally persuasive when applied to another "Point of View". BEA's description describes virtual "controlled flight". If you don't think so, will you at least admit that it can be taken so? They then proceed to say "low forward speed". High vertical acceleration is an attack on the posture of the a/c as described, so shall we excuse the report as simply a misunderstanding in transit from the French to English? No.
English is the language of International flight, by agreement.
There is a gap in ACARS/Aircraft radio connection. Even though BEA would have us envision an a/c that is complete and on the verge of recovery from jet upset as it unluckily hits the Water first, this visual is an artifice. My evidence? ACARS itself.
Over what is believed to be the time frame of this flight's demise, it infers some controllability on the part of the flight crew. If the link (connection) to the satellite demands line of sight, we can accept an upset in Pitch, with Roll excursions limited to orientation that does not include the inverted. Except perhaps once.
Back to the Vertical Stabilizer. The folding of the structure beneath the VS mounts you use to imply a conclusion of partition by vertical acceleration that is interrupted twice. It is possible certainly. Wait, let's instead assume that the VS didn't separate from the Aircraft, but the a/c separated from the VS. At high speed, even thin air can be a machete to crew desperately trying to raise the nose to slow; it may demand energetic control inputs, such that the integrity of the airframe is compromised. Could the elevators and HS have corrupted the tail mountings of the VS? Inertia. Try to ignore BEA's suggestion of a tame descent, though desired for many reasons, I think it unlikely. An overloaded HS/Elevator structure? Imagine.
The HS swivels, and demands a structure that has the ability to resist the load of a moving structure. In a sense, the HS is the more petulant of the two basic structures.
In an uncontrolled descent, well above Vne (a fluctuating value, to be sure), control surface loads can easily exceed their critical limit. Flutter becomes a lethal noise, a devil that has haunted Aeronautics since its beginning. If in this descent the elevators were commanded to a sweep that imposed these (demonstrable) loads, the HS could have broken its blocks in the tail, and transferred its negative loads to the structures beneath the VS imposing these two wrinkles while in the air.
It is possible the a/c entered the Sea in four reasonably distinct pieces, Tail, aft section, wings (with center section) and mid fuselage, and the nose. The BEA's suggestion that the a/c was intact cannot escape the thought that a complete a/c is sleek, and wants speed, belying the conclusion of slow horizontal entry. As separate
sections, speed at entry would be limited by a draggy shape.
The Galley? the crew module? The damage they share could quite easily have been the result of aerodynamic loads sufficient to disrupt attachments and sign their presence with a bent mount or two.
The failures you describe so eloquently also wordlessly question the design of the tail, indeed, they ask why plant the Tail on the Fuselage instead of building the entire a/c as a unit. Because the Tail was built thousands of miles away? What was the cost of shipping? The pictures supplied also show the historic problems with combining Composites with metal into separate structures.
My hope is that the possibility I describe is wrong. Can you help dismiss it?
bill