There's a new, blown up picture (no pun intended) of the aircraft just before it struck the ground showing that most of the vertical stabilizer and all of the rudder are gone. No idea if it is genuine or has been doctored, or if the angle is off and there is actually more of the tail there than you can see. If you take it at face value then all of the actual rudder and most of the vertical stabilizer is gone. Suggestion is now that this may be what caused the fatal dive.
Several thoughts entered my mind. If it was lost as a result of the dive, the wing tips are amazingly intact. Having worked around 737's for several years the vertical stabilizer seemed to be far more a robust structure than the wing tips, even the wing itself outboard of the engine pylons. Seems to be that they would have folded before the whole vertical stabilizer could have been torn off.
Second, if it did come off in the dive then why didn't the airplane immediately begin to spin along the Y axis?
Why was the aircraft descent not able to be arrested, even with the loss of the vertical stabilizer/rudder just due to speed and lift? Yaw control would have been severely limited but as United 232 proved, was possible. Still a lot of unanswered questions but I still lean towards a deliberate act.
What's the point of an open door policy if inside the open door sits a closed mind?