I saw a documentary years ago about what happened. They think it was on a island, cant remember what it was called. They found various artefacts on it such as the remains of a leather sole, as well as some graves that the natives had dug for some people they found dead. There was a picture of the island and in it there was what looked like the remains of a planes landing gear sticking out of the water. They thought that they would of landed on the shallow water and that the tide would of moved the plane but the gear stuck in the soft sand. This seems to support that as that's would likely be what happened to the plane when it was ripped of the gear and moved by the water.