[michigander]

Investigators look at the destroyed tail fin mounts of American Airlines flight 587 after the tail
section of the plane was loaded aboard a flatbed truck to be taken from the scene of the
airliner's crash in Queens, New York, November 15, 2001. NTSB investigators are examining
the possibility that the tail fin of the plane may have been the first part of the jet to break off in
flight before the crash. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

[discostu]

Interesting pictures. You wouldn't happen to have a shot of the tail being removed from the water and that stock shot of the plane? One thing I noticed when looking at those side by side is that there is a significant portion of the bottom of the tail that was not on the part removed from the bay (you could tell by the positioning of the blue A in the logo). Now looking at these picks it looks like pretty much the whole tail is no longer attached to the fuselage (expect the parts right around the bolts). So this bring up the question of where the rest of the tail is. Could be that the whole joining area (between the logo and fuselage) disintigrated, when composites give they don't mess around.

[Tony in Hawaii]

There are six tabs which retain the vertical stab. Only four of these are visible in the pictures of the chunk of aft fuselage in this picture. Very interesting.

These are very interesting pictures, thanks for posting them, I hadn't seen them before.

[MassLengthTime]

Vertical Stabilizer and components of aircraft recovered from the water

Vert Stab attachment point. To my very untrained eye, there appears to be a lot of wear in the area where the bolt/flange/fuselage bracket assembly attaches.

More pics here.