Quote from
Machinbird:
On a local level within the aircraft, Whatever was below greatly influenced the damage pattern above.
The FDR may well have been thrown up into THS structure with the initial hydraulic induced debris flow.
I really suspect that the THS structure was then pushed up and aft out of the aircraft, throwing the aft part of the VS upward and forward and taking a bite out of the rudder bottom as it passed by.
As a non-structures man, am reluctant to try and add to his compelling description, but it might be worth developing a point I made last night. I was speculating that the large surface area of the tailplane (OK, I'll call it the THS) would cause it to decelerate faster than the fuselage forward and aft, just as
Machinbird implies. I wondered if this might cause the fuselage to fail forward as well as aft of the THS.
It seems very likely that the
APU tailcone would break off. But I notice that some posters seem to be referring to the whole of the rear fuselage, aft of the pressure bulkhead, as the tailcone. Looking at the cutaway sketch
posted by PJ2, and Machacha's picture (re-posted by susu42), it seems clear that the aft pressure bulkhead is forward of the front of the THS. If I understand correctly, the THS screw-jack acts on the front spar of the THS, and the photo shows it something of the order of 2 metres aft of the pressure bulkhead and DFDR/SSFDR chassis.
So, as I speculated earlier, how about the fuselage failing also between the pressure bulkhead and the screw-jack? In that case, the SSFDR chassis and/or memory module might not be "thrown up" into, and then with, the THS.
PS
Can anyone tell me what the large bare-metal strut in the middle of the photo is for?