Quote from stevegee58:
Guys, you don't seem to realize just how fragile an airplane really is. There really isn't much too them. The things are made almost entirely of aluminum including the longitudinal beams and ribs. The skin is thin enough for a linebacker to punch a hole through with his fist.
Now imagine something that fragile hitting the ground at about 700 feet per second. (That's about 400-500 mph) The plane was in a powered free fall when it hit, what the experts call "powered flight into terrain".
There were no "big chunks" left.
Another famous plane crash is Pan Am flight 103 that crashed near Locherbie Scotland. In that case there were lots of very large pieces left. Why? Because the plane broke apart at altitude from a bomb. At high altitude (about 30,000 feet), the engines quit and the several large pieces of plane decelerated to a near stop and fluttered to the ground.
ive seen countless crash scenes that all show a majority of the plane in the wreckage... why is this different?