I have been reading through this long thread. Very interesting discussion.
What always was omitted and this is something I am unsure what happened and maybe someone can recall this.
The AP disconnected automatically, but what happened before? What actually made the AP disconnect.
If we go back in history, and I am still not certain what this fact is trying to tell us, please let me tell you this.
I plotted the position of the wreck and the position where the Tail was found. The Tail actually was found 70Km northeast of the location of the wreck. While the sea current where at that day were going northeast to south. How the heck did the Tail get so far away from the wreck assuming that it was still sitting on the tailcone on impact.
Second thing that makes me a bit confused. The 36G arm in the rudder of the recovered tail, was actually found broken. Please keep in min that the 36G arm is not the fixation on the aircraft but the hinge between tail and rudder. This special arm can withstand 210'000 nm of force. The tail cone would have acted as buffer between the tail and the aircraft body. Due to this I cannot think that there was enough force to break it.
Bringing these two elements together makes me assume that the tail was already ripped of the plane earlier. While in deepstall? No. But at what point in time. Maybe exactly at the point when the pilots were doing a right turn. Remember, the FDR said, pilot gave stick input to the left and up. At the same time, ACARS reports a failure of the RTLU. Well, I would say, tail gone, RTLU gone. Logical response of ACARS to report it as failed
As BAE has not release exact coordinates of the flightpath, it makes it hard to overlay with the other position. fact is, they turned back before the decent and due to this the theory looks valid to me.
Opinions?