@wonkazoo
Your post (
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post9172441) is one of the more enlightened and informative ones on this wild thread, welcome to the forum.
A couple of observations to supplement yours, which changes the conclusion somewhat.
Yes, the top of the fuselage certainly failed in tension, implying a downward motion of the tail. However no HS failure is needed to explain this. The HS exerts a continuous downward pressure (it is in effect an upside down wing) on the rear fuselage to pivot the nose (and the wing) up around the centre of lift (the centre of gravity MUST be ahead of the centre of lift on all conventional fixed-wing aircraft in flight). The fuselage is a cylindrical metal tube which is very resistant to torsional forces, but as soon as any part loses its integrity it will crumple and yield to bending force very rapidly. So if the lower part of the rear fuselage loses structural integrity the tail will bend downwards before tension in the surviving upper section causes it to part. This downward pivot of the tail also places the HS vertically into the slipstream, causing its failure due to aerodynamic loads (as can be clearly demonstrated on the recovered left HS). We do not know how the right HS failed, but the damage suggests that it was ripped away downward together with the support structure sometime after the left HS was lost
The visible VS damage is consistent with ground impact at a near vertical attitude, should that kind of damage occurred while in the air in the initial breakup sequence, the VS would have been completely shorn off. The rudder and much of the trailing edge were lost in the air during the breakup or subsequent fall.
The tail and APU cone were found within 350 metres of each other (both marked and identifiable on the satellite photo when comparing larger ground features from the aerial video shown). We do not know the location of the HS, but based on the fact that photos only appeared a day later when the search area was expanded, it may be assumed to lie some distance from the tail. This implies that the tail and APU remained joined for some time after the HS has departed, which is entirely conceivable as the upper part of the joining frame is relatively undamaged on both sides.
All in all this would suggest that the initial failure occurred in the lower rear fuselage, and not in the tail section (as I have myself suggested until the HS video screencap was released).