Originally Posted by
etudiant
Relatively intact at impact is not the impression that these images transmit.
The tail structure is torn off and the various hull pieces are widely separated, in water shallower than the airplane was long. To me that suggests the airplane may have come apart even before it hit the water.
I would think that any breakup could have occurred on impact. The fuselage if the concertina effect is correct would have been crushed from beneath and the hold and passenger cabin filled with water and possibly with engines/wings detached could have sunk fairly rapidly but all the parts would be carried and rolled along by the 4 to 5 knot currents until they embedded sufficiently in the seabed mud in a position that the current no longer moved them that could take from minutes to hours. So parts being miles apart would not be at all surprising. If the entire tail empennage complete with pressure bulkhead was one of the pieces after hitting the sea surface it may well have floated in severe winds for hours or even a day or so. This would drift the tail in a totally different direction to the rest of the aircraft and it could easily be several miles in a random direction before eventually sinking.
Tracking the pieces using winds and currents is possible but all sorts of assumptions have to be made on how long each would float what the sea state, currents and winds were at the time how long to get stuck in the mud etc. The calculation would probably depend more on the assumptions than any data.