Originally posted by bearfoil ...
There was no aerodynamic flight.
447's trajectory was down, and her hull had no heading, by their own explanation. Intact, this aircraft's nose would have a heading only after all its rotation had ceased. It's nose was unwinding the compass' rose in a left rotation, laterally.
Technically, your "no aerodynamic flight" is true, but you need to consider that the attitude the aircraft attained was an aerodynamic compromise. Rightly, or wrongly my interpretation of the BEA's description, backed by their photographic evidence of impact damage, was that the aircraft had entered an unrecoverable stall regime whereby the attitude and bank angle had become stabilized in the lost lift vortex in which it was slowly rotating. Its trajectory was certainly down with a high angle of attack and high rate of descent, though in your terminology, "
winding the compass' rose in a
right-hand rotation, laterally."
That resulted in the tail swinging to port (left) on impact and following the culmination of the forces acting on its clevis joints in all planes and vectors, not forgetting the reciprocal buoyancy forces, the Vertical Stabilizer finished up in the water on its port-side with its rudder hard to starboard.
At the time of the impact, the wind was from the north at 25~30 knots, and the rudder aspect was such that the V/S was quite capable of "sailing" away from the scene.