The top photo in Figure 28 is part of the R1 door on MH370 – the most forward door on the right side of the airplane. The middle photo is a piece of cabin interior panel; it could not be determined exactly where it had been installed in the passenger cabin. The bottom photo is a seat back trim panel; the panel that encases the In-Flight Entertainment monitor. It could not be determined which passenger seat it had been attached to.
The small size of these pieces, and the fact that they escaped from inside the fuselage, has led many people to believe they could only have been created in a high-speed diving crash. Taken in isolation, these three pieces might fit with a high-speed dive scenario, but to conclude that based on these three pieces alone is a huge stretch. We know there is overwhelming evidence to reject a high-speed diving crash, so we know that there must be another explanation for how these small interior pieces escaped from the fuselage.
Fortunately, given our knowledge of how the airplane entered the water, it is not difficult to determine what the source was for the damage (inside the fuselage) that produced these pieces, and to explain how they escaped from the fuselage. Investigation analysis tells us that it happened as follows.
We know that there was significant spanwise loading that was compressing the trailing edge of the right wing into the fuselage. From our experiment earlier with the paper airplane, we can see that the greatest concentration for this compression would be at the aft wing root (the aft wing root is where the trailing edge of the wing connects to the fuselage; see Figure 1 and Figure 13).
As this compression along the trailing edge of the right wing built up, the crushing pressure against the fuselage would eventually be too much for the fuselage structure to resist. The structural design of the airplane simply does not account for massive compressive loads into the fuselage structure at that point. Eventually, the wing root structure would have crushed through into the fuselage. If that happened (and it likely did happen), it would create a breach (hole) in the fuselage through which the small interior pieces could escape.
A breach into the fuselage at the wing root would account for at least two of the three small interior pieces shown in Figure 28. Those pieces could easily have been torn free as part of the crushing contact inside the fuselage.
The piece from the R1 door could have been dislodged by contact with something, such as a food cart, during the massive deceleration during the ditching. That piece could also have exited the same hole at the wing root, but that is not likely.
There is a more plausible scenario for that piece escaping. It is more likely that the R1 door simply popped open. With the right wingtip dragging in the water, the front part of the right wing root would be under a massive tension load, which would be trying to rip the wing out of the fuselage. The aft part of the wing root would be under an equally massive compression load, pushing it into the fuselage, as described above.
There would be substantial distortion in the fuselage, not only from these wing root stresses, but also from the loads applied when the front part of the airplane entered the water. This distortion could cause the R1 door to pop open.
Once the door opened, the interior of the door would be subjected to the forces of the water rushing by during the ditching. That could easily explain how a piece of the interior of the R1 door could break free.
There is no specific witness mark evidence on this R1 door piece to show exactly what happened to create it, or to show us exactly how it managed to exit the fuselage. A proper investigation analysis requires that we use already confirmed evidence to guide us to the most likely scenario.
In this case, we have already determined the sequence up to where extraordinary compression forces were acting on the fuselage at the right wing root. We also know, from the existence of the interior wreckage pieces, that the fuselage had been breached.
We can look at the timing for when the breach must have occurred. There is no reason to believe that the fuselage had been breached prior to when the right wingtip dug into the water. There is no logic to thinking that a breach could occur very late in the controlled ditching sequence, after the airplane had already slowed to a near stop. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that the breach occurred exactly as described above, at the time the wing root broke through into the fuselage.
It is important to remember here that the overriding question about what happened to MH370 has already been answered – the pilot intentionally ditched the airplane. What we are doing now is simply ensuring there is a reasonable explanation for the other evidence that is available. We are showing how all of the pieces of recovered wreckage can be accounted for in our scenario of an intentional pilot controlled ditching.
Among the pieces of wreckage that have been recovered are three small pieces that broke free from the tail structure. Again, there is no direct physical evidence to confirm exactly how they broke free. One thing we know for certain is that they broke free as part of the controlled ditching process.
There are two possibilities to explain how they broke free. One possibility is that they were simply torn free by the force of the water against the tail during the controlled ditching. Another possibility is that they were dislodged when they were struck by some piece that had broken free of the airplane.
If something did strike the tail, the most likely candidate would be the right wing. There is a reasonable chance that the damage at right wing root was sufficient to cause the wing to completely separate from the fuselage. It could then have travelled aft into the tail.
It is also possible that some individual piece from the right wing (such as a section of the flap) broke free and struck the tail.
This is another instance where there is insufficient evidence to confirm one way or the other what the forces were to dislodge these tail structure pieces. However, the existence of these pieces cannot be used to cast doubt on the controlled ditching scenario. We must remember that we already have definitive proof as to what happened to MH370. Regarding these pieces, we simply need to show that they are not at all inconsistent with a pilot controlled intentional ditching scenario.
So far, we have analyzed eleven of the twenty wreckage pieces that have been confirmed as coming from MH370, and tied each of them to a controlled ditching event. That leaves nine additional pieces that must be accounted for. In this section, we will evaluate their importance, and look to see what information they can provide.
As reported by the official investigation (and I agree), there are no significant witness marks on any of these nine pieces. However, they are informative because their in-service locations on the airplane have been identified.
Figure 29 identifies nineteen of the twenty pieces that have been confirmed as having come from MH370, and indicates where they came from on the airplane. The piece that is not identified in Figure 29 (which is sourced from the Ministry of Transport of Malaysia) is their piece number 12, which they identified as being a part of a bottom panel from the wing or horizontal stabilizer (see the location of the horizontal stabilizer in Figure 1). The nine pieces that we must account for, as identified by the numbering system used in Figure 29, are as follows: #’s 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 12, 18, 20 and 27.