If this horrific scenario described by the NYT is true (and I sincerely hope this is a case of rotten journalism), then the passengers at the front of the plane would have been recording the attempted re-entry into the cockpit on their cameras and cell phones. Would the memory storage in these devices, SD cards and so on, survive this severe impact sufficient to be readable?
The scenes inside the plane if the passengers were not incapacitated are beyond imagination, and the possibility that these are recorded and can be replayed is the stuff of nightmares.
Please let this not be the explanation of the crash......