What the..

[HighFructose]

Today I was flying my SSTO as a normal plane, but really fast. At low altitude. I then decided it would be perfectly safe to pull a 20+ G turn. Then this happened:

Has anyone seen this before? In the second and third pictures.

[The_Rocketeer]

I've seen the effect after surface impacts - Mk3 parts do it very well as they have excellent impact resistance, so the parts don't pop. G-force, like impact force, is still force - you just exceeded the structural limitations of the joints.

Personally I think this is awesome. I'd like to see a lot more distortion of parts and joints, and less total-destruction of parts. Makes surviving a crash landing and attempting a recovery far more interesting.

[HighFructose]

I agree. I wish parts would bend a lot more before they explode or snap apart. It surprised me when this happened though, I expected the plane to shear itself apart and disentigrate, but it didn't. Must have been more than 20 gees then...

[The Aziz]

That would be much more than 20G. I was able to bend one at ~180G (autostrut probably on, but even this couldnt help)

[DrLicor]

Yep, joints are bendable since 1.2 (?) I believe. 

[CaptainTrebor]

I've seen this a couple of times, but I cannot recall exactly how I did it. 

[NSEP]

I never enqountered this because i use Autostrut to much.

[Kerbal101]

FMRS probably treated structural failure as "separation".

[Xemina]

Yeah, what @Kerbal101 said. That's all I can think of.