One of our club members lost his GP cub yesterday. He, and other witnesses said that it was flying straight and level when "part of the tail flew off". The airplane then rolled inverted and went straight down into a field. I was fueling my plane so I didn't see it, but I heard a load pop just before it went down.

When we examined the wreckage, we found that both tips of the horizontal stabilizer were broken off at approximately the outboard joint. The elevators on both sides were gone. The rudder was intact, and the owner said that there had been no connection between the two elevator halves, yet they were both gone. Whatever happened, it effected both the left and the right hand side of the stabilizer/elevator equally and indepentently. My guess is that the failure was a result of elevator flutter.

Any thoughts?