I wonder at what stage the "module memoire" broke away from what they call the "chassis". At sea-level impact or when the chassis hit the sea bed?
No. In the ET409 accident, i.e. the Ethiopian B737 which came down in the sea after takeoff from Beirut on 25 Jan 2010, the CVR memory module had separated from the chassis. It was reportedly found at a later stage.
Is it just me, or does this seem like a Delta Sierra design for any crash recorder? It might make sense if there were 20 of these memory units scattered about the aircraft, all with mirrored copies of the data, but like this? Why have a big orange painted box of no value to the investigation, and a small coke can containing the "crown jewels" perched on a shelf of the large box where it can be knocked off the "shelf" and make its own trip to the bottom? If the memory module is not buried in the silt under the big box, you can bet it broke loose at the water interface transition.
And from the second quote, it appears they already had one object lesson.
.
And this accident was probably only ~ 1/40th of the peak possible crash energy!!!