Valujet 592 hit the everglades near vertically at high speed after a cargo fire, virtually nothing was found on the surface, the largest piece of wreckage was the size of a football.
I still think this is a serious fire possibly from the cargo deck that happened to knock out comms first. I assume comms and ACARS etc still have to run down wiring to aerials on the hull. Why couldnt that wiring have been interrupted by fire before ACARS was aware of it.
For there to be very little debris in shallow waters then this aircraft cannot have broken up in flight otherwise debris would be floating everywhere. I suspect the airframe went into the sea intact, whether controlled ditching with rapid sinking or a high velocity impact. Who knows.