I'm not sure why so many people are looking at this and saying "Proves it must have been a soft ditching".
It's been ripped off the wing, it has lots of damage around the rear edge, the actuator mount that should be present in that pic I posted above isn't there (ie ripped out.)
At the rear edge of the wing, close to the wing root, I can imaging it surviving a high speed water impact and ending up like that. Quite a few large pieces of Air France 447 survived as intact as this one. Including at least one flap I can recall. So it's condition doesn't really say much about the impact.
I wonder what the flotation volume is? Just hollow sealed cavities, or some kind of closed-cell foam?
Because the question is, did it break off on impact (and then why wasn't it seen?)
Or did it go to the bottom with most of the wreckage and then work loose and pop up later?
Hollow sealed cavities would have been pressure-crushed at depth. So would flexible closed cell foam, removing buoyancy. But a hard foam might have held up. It's just that this is big and light-colored, so WHY WASN'T IT SPOTTED?
I wonder if it might have been floating end-up, rather than flat? Someone should put it back in the water, and see.