THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 8, 1996 TAG: 9610080335
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SMITHTOWN, N.Y. LENGTH: 58 lines
The Navy is nearly ready to pack up its scuba gear and underwater robots, leaving the mystery of TWA Flight 800 to an investigative army hunting a solution with microscopes and computers.
``It's definitely the beginning of a new phase once we get all the pieces up from the ocean,'' said FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom, the agency's lead investigator.
``But nothing much will change. There just won't be things coming in the front door anymore,'' he said. ``We will be concentrating on what is already there in the hangar.''
On Monday, the aircraft hangar in Calverton contained more than 90 percent of the pieces of the Boeing 747, which exploded July 17, killing all 230 aboard. Authorities still don't know whether a bomb, missile or mechanical malfunction caused the explosion that spread wreckage like confetti across five square miles of the Atlantic Ocean bottom.
Two Navy boats, with 100 divers and 450 crew members conducting the salvage operation, are expected to leave within two weeks, said Rear Admiral Edward Kristensen.
Some Navy personnel will remain to supervise the dredging of the ocean floor, which will be contracted out to private companies.
``We want to make sure we haven't left anything behind, but I don't think there is very much buried in the sand,'' Kristensen said.
If a cause still hasn't been determined by the time the boats leave, thousands of pieces of debris must undergo a closer inspection and be added to the three-dimensional mockup of the plane being assembled in the hangar.
Investigators are still missing key pieces.
The FBI is seeking any metal that would have surrounded a hole created by a bomb or missile. And the National Transportation Safety Board is eager to find a missing fuel pump and six missing fuel probes, which could, theoretically, have sparked the explosion in the center fuel tank. The NTSB also wants more of the center fuel tank, about two-thirds of which has been found.
As metal and aluminum fragments arrive at the hangar, they are immediately viewed by FBI forensic experts for unusual pitting or scarring. Then they are placed under high-powered microscopes to determine if they have come in contact with an explosive.
Bomb-sniffing dogs regularly check the debris. Softer materials such as seating and insulation are vacuumed with special sweepers that contain filters to catch the smallest materials, then tested for traces of specific explosives.
The divers have been searching for a telltale piece of wreckage that could be as small as a fingernail - the size of the piece that showed Pan Am Flight 103 was felled by a bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Kallstrom said the piece that might explain the disaster could already be in the hangar, so investigators are re-inspecting pieces there.
Meanwhile, investigators are feeding the latest data from wreckage and other aspects of the investigation into computers. In one scenario, for example, the NTSB has assembled a map which shows precisely where each piece of the plane landed in the ocean. A line is drawn from each object, creating a cascade of rays from the plane to the ocean floor. by CNB