Bearfoil, at the risk of insulting I must say I have noticed your hyperfocus over the months here.
I note that I have changed my picture of what MIGHT have happened rather dramatically twice since I joined this system. And the picture I have now is still incomplete and leaves enough details unanswered I've decided not to push it very hard.
(Dryly I note that virtually none of the proposals show how the plane ended up where the searchers have not yet scoured the ocean bottom AND the surviving pieces show their particular breakage and stress patterns. Um, I also note nobody has done any computerized stress analysis to explain something as "small" as the fracture pattern in the vertical stabilizer's mountings. Instead we ALL make conjectures about it. The closest I've seen to modeling it is my crumby observation of what paper torn out of a three ring binder looks like for varying orientations of the tearing forces.)
I'm data driven. Feed me. Please.
{o.o}