OE, I still have in mind a severe tail strike situation.
I'm an EE not an ME so I could easily be all wet here. But I envision that the overall tail section design would be such that the pressure vessel would not be ripped open with a very severe tail strike. I figure it would break just aft of the cabin's end leaving the pressure vessel intact not spilling cargo. If that is the case, the stringers on the bottom break leading to a bending moment somewhere up among the clevis joints. The scenario I have in mind does not use acceleration to pull anything loose, it uses simple static stretch on the clevis joints with the front and rear of the VS as the pressure points and the clevis pins all going into varying degrees of tension. That would produce the damage to the nose of the VS that is very visible. I imagine it should have produced a characteristic damage to the rear of the VS as well.
Can that work into your analysis? And did the break on "36g" come with the force in the right direction to even entertain a scenario like the above?
(I am envisioning an attack angle closer to 10 to 20 degrees as the plan hits the water. But the wave effects might have been enough to do the trick even at 5 degrees.)