An in flight break up does not generate the same dame to a body simply because the acceleration is not an impulse like hitting the water.
If the aircraft was in one piece when it hit the water, the effect would be like a body going 450 - 500 Knots into a brick wall. Water is treated as a solid at such speeds.
The bodies, in such an impact, would be obliterated into so much chum (As would the airliner itself. An example is the flight that went into the Florida swamp after the oxygen generators went off that it was carrying.), not together with broken bones.
Since they have found the vertical stabilizer with the rudder still attached, that portion of the aircraft most certainly did come off before impact. At what point in the incident time line that took place will be determined once the on board recorders, “Black Box’s”, are found.
But broken, not obliterated bodies, points to, at a minimum, a partial midair break up.
Probabaly not even chum. The term I read in the past describes it as one being 'Vaporized.'
I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion, based on bodies being found. Yes water is treated as a solid at speed, but recall that minimal lift speed for a jumbo is somewhere around 200 MPH. If the plane hit the water at a sharp angle, that would indeed be like slamming into a wall, if however it hit the water at a lower angle, it would still break apart, but the impact to the bodies would not be 500 MPH to 0 virtually instantaneously.
The plane may have come apart in the air, but broken bones on a few recovered bodies I don’t think in and of itself is conclusive evidence of mid-air breakup.