Gear down . . .
If I may, a brief musing on the subject of the gear being down . . .
The proposal we have so far from the BEA is of a very significant vertical deceleration at the time of impact with the water - as seen by the vertical crushing of internal spaces retrieved.
If you look at this another way, the gear does not know at that instance that it is meant to be decelerating as its mounting effectively means the major part of its mass is still in free-fall - so why would it not continue downwards? As has been said, the locks are not designed to resist this sort of force.
Thus it is likely to release at the point of impact and continue to deploy under gravity, avoiding the torsion of a water impact at speed.
Any sense?