The next 48 hours may produce conclusive evidence of what caused the crash of TWA Flight 800, FBI investigators said Sunday, as more wreckage from the ill-fated jetliner was identified.
Investigators are hoping the recovery of a piece of the 747’s aluminum skin may confirm a theory that a bomb blew off the cockpit and first-class cabin section of the Paris-bound plane minutes after its departure from Kennedy International Airport, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
“We need that piece of sheet metal” in order to finally declare the crash a crime, a source close to the investigation told the AP.
James Kallstrom, assistant director of the FBI, said Sunday that the agency does have a leading theory on what caused the July 17 crash that killed 230 people but would not specify it.
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He said the Navy has been instructed to recover pieces of wreckage that might confirm the favored theory but would not describe the parts it sought.
Nor would he reveal which theory he favors of three possible scenarios continually mentioned during the investigation: a missile hitting the aircraft, a bomb exploding from within, and a catastrophic mechanical failure.
The search has focused on a field of debris on the ocean floor that fell along the Paris-bound plane’s flight path.
Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the wreckage trail indicates that the front portion of the plane, containing the cockpit and first-class cabins, separated from the rest of the aircraft and entered the water earlier along the plane’s flight path.
The jet apparently “flew without a front for 10 to 11 seconds” after the initial blast, one source told the AP.
The search and recovery efforts now are centered in three areas of debris contained within a four-mile-long track about 10 miles off Long Island’s South Shore.
The trail of debris stretches from the southwest to the northeast, paralleling the jet’s flight path.
Wreckage from the forward section, including nose wheels and parts of the first-class cabin, has been located 1.5 miles southwest of the main area of debris. The main area to the northeast contains items from the center and rear of the plane, such as engines, the black boxes and large sections of the rear passenger cabins.
Kallstrom said a number of pieces of wreckage have been sent to Washington for testing.
“I think within the next 48 hours we’ll get something that we think is going to give us a solution,” Kallstrom said, referring to the cause of the crash.
On Sunday search and recovery workers located what they believe may be the third of the plane’s four turbojet engines; two engines already had been located but not yet retrieved from the ocean floor.
Francis said that early Sunday the salvage ship USS Grasp discovered a 50-foot piece of fuselage from the center or rear section of the plane. He said investigators hope the new section of wreckage will yield more bodies.
As of Sunday, the bodies of 153 victims had been recovered and others were spotted on the ocean floor. All but four of the bodies retrieved were identified, officials said. The remains of 142 have been released to their families for burial.
Experts have noted a number of similarities between the crash of TWA Flight 800 and that of Pan Am Flight 103, which was bombed in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Investigators concluded that the 1988 Pan Am crash was caused by a plastic explosive, secreted within a suitcase inside the forward cargo hold.
The cockpit voice recorder on the TWA plane registered a loud noise just before the recording abruptly ended, as did the recorder on the Pan Am flight.
Some other parallels between the crash of the New York-bound Pan Am jetliner and the TWA plane are striking, according to Robert Gandt , a commercial jetliner pilot and the author of the 1995 book “Sky Gods: The Fall of Pan Am.”
Gandt pointed out that the front section of the Pan Am flight also separated from the fuselage in 1988. The forward cargo hold is adjacent to the 747’s electronics bay and immediately below the first-class cabins and cockpit.
An explosion in that area would explain why the plane’s electrical systems–powering the plane’s flight recorders– failed earlier than the appearance of the fireball described by witnesses, he said. Radar tracking suggests 36 seconds elapsed between the plane’s power failure and the point at which the aircraft began to disintegrate.