Very true. But how would a flock of geese tear off two engines? Just asking, I don't pretend to know about these things.
I think more likely from contact with the river.
The two engines hanging below the wing are going to have a lot of force applied as they touch the water prior to the plane significantly slowing down.
Combine that with probable damage after the bird strike, thrown compressor/turbine fans, etc.
I do not know about modern engines, but many years ago did tear down a J-48 that had suffered a bird ingestion. There was a ball of bent, detached compressor blades.
So imagine a rotor spinning 30-60,000 RPM, weighing hundreds of pounds suddenly STOPPING.
What kind of motor mount could have kept it on the wing?
The engines hit the water just after the body of the plane. The engines are designed to come off when they hit something.
When hit by something going 160MPH water is very hard and will knock the engines off the plane.
The birds ruined the rotors inside the engines so they stopped producing output. The water in the river tore the engines off the plane... just as it was supposed to do.
ROFL!!!
No, but the geese would have thrown them into huge vibrations, that, coupled with the landing on the water, might have made it more easy for them to be torn from the body of the plane.
My hubby, SirKit, reckons that the reason the plane floated so long, and all were able to get off of it, before it started to sink, was because the engines were gone, and weren't weighing the wings down.