@ CONSO
Your logic certainly requires some deeper thought. I would start with the left HS which was cleanly snapped off by an upward bending force at the weak point in the structure where the airfoil is mated to the much narrower HS centre section. Only aerodynamic drag could have done it this way. Pure speculation, but this weak point coud actually be a design feature to protect the hinge/jackscrew assembly so in case one HS fails in overload (eg. if hit by a departing engine), the plane can still remain controllable with the other HS.
I cannot envision a scenario where this could happen before the tail broke off, because in that case the entire plane would have needed to be in an attitude which would have also caused the wings to fail and especially the engines to depart. Since the wing-engines-forward fuselage stayed intact for some time and continued along the flight path in a descending trajectory (engines were found near the main wreckage), the tail must have parted complete.
As unlikely as it is, this suggests the HS must have parted after the initial failure and severance of the tail. One possible solution bridging this and your thoughts is that the left HS could have snapped off as the tail was pivoting down, a fraction of a second before the upper rear fuselage failed in tension, which may have provided the necessary counter force. Calculating the various forces at play here are beyond my abilities, but I'm sure there are people busy in Toulouse doing exactly this.
Last edited by andrasz; 8th Nov 2015 at 04:21.