[X-FID]

If foam had corrupted the skin of the craft early in flight, sensors would have failed well before re-entry. The tin-foilers, cannot accept this.

What kind of sensors? I doubt the temperature sensors would fail on take-off because it ain't going fast enough to generate the heat (unless there's a fire).

Thermocouple circuits for obvious reasons are designed for an off-scale reading when they are destroyed or disconnected, that didn't happen during the entire mission until the re-entry, that we know of.

If you mean another another type of sensor that can detect tile damage, I would be interested to know about that, otherwise the debris smashing into the port wing is what I would be looking at closely as well as every other possibility.

So call me a tin-foiler if you like.

[dtel]

If the foam had PUNCTURED the wing, not knocked off a few tiles, which they have readily acknowledged can number up to a hundred per flight, the wing would not have made it through the mission.
Did a significant number of tiles get knocked off in a vulnerable area?
Who knows at this time.
The fact is, if the wing had been punctured on liftoff, the craft would have never made it to the re-entry phase.