Recorder Damage May Hamper Crash Probe : ‘No Useful Information’ Yielded by Devices as Invesitgators Search for Cause of DC-8 Tragedy.

The flight recorders were damaged and may not yield much evidence about why a chartered jetliner carrying American soldiers home from the Middle East crashed into a wooded hilltop, killing all 256 people aboard, the chief investigator said Friday.

As Canadian and American investigators continued their slow and painstaking search for the cause of the crash of the Arrow Air DC-8, Peter Boag, chief investigator for the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, announced that the damage to the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder could delay and possibly hinder a solution to the mystery.

“No useful information has been obtained from the recorders,” Boag told a news conference. “Both recorders suffered extensive internal damage in the crash.”

“I can’t say at this time if any useful information can be obtained,” he added, although technicians are still working in Ottawa laboratories to decipher the fire-damaged material. Analysts were able to listen to the tapes, he said.

The four-engine jet crashed and burned early Thursday seconds after takeoff from Gander International Airport on Canada’s Atlantic Coast, scattering Christmas presents and debris in the snowy woods of Newfoundland.

The plane was carrying 248 members of the 101st Airborne Division home from the Middle East to their base at Ft. Campbell, Ky. All had just completed a six-month tour of duty as peacekeepers in the Sinai Peninsula, where they monitored Egypt’s and Israel’s compliance with a 1979 peace treaty. Eight crew members from the Miami-based charter company, Arrow Air, were also killed.

Bodies lay in rows in an airport hangar here Friday, waiting for doctors to perform autopsies that might also yield some clues to the worst air disaster in U.S. military history. Initially, 250 soldiers from the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” were reported aboard the plane, but the Pentagon lowered the total Friday to 248.

Maj. Gen. John S. Crosby, the U.S. Army’s deputy chief of staff for personnel, said that aluminum cases were delivered to Gander on Friday for transporting the bodies, but it was not yet clear when the move would begin. The victims’ remains will be taken to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for examination by military forensic experts.

About 100 officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and 140 Canadian soldiers worked at the crash site Friday, supervised by 40 investigators from the aviation safety board. Crumpled and blackened pieces of the plane rested among charred birch saplings in the rocky valley just south of the airport runway.

Government investigators were extremely guarded about their initial findings and possible causes for the disaster, but some signs were beginning to emerge about the focus of their inquiries.

Tail Hit Ground First

Boag said, for example, that the first section of the stretched DC-8 to hit the ground was the tail. He also said that the wings had not been de-iced before taking off in Gander’s sub-freezing drizzle.

Noting that a decision about whether to de-ice is the discretion of the pilot, Boag said, “To my knowledge,” the pilot of the DC-8, Capt. John Griffin, “didn’t ask for de-icing.”

Boag refused to single out the absence of de-icing as a probable cause of the crash, saying that he drew no conclusions, but he indicated that it was a possibility that will be studied.

Other aviation experts said that the possibility of ice on the wings and the fact that the plane crashed tail first could be significant.

‘Generate Enough Lift’

John Galipault, the president of the Aviation Safety Institute of Columbus, Ohio, said in a telephone interview that initial impact by the tail showed that the plane was “in a stall” or “about to be.”

“He’s got his nose up because he’s trying to . . . to generate enough lift to keep from going down,” Galipault said.

Galipault, a nationally recognized air safety expert, offered several explanations for a plane’s stalling, including lack of engine thrust and the angle of the wing flaps, but he added, “Ice could be a factor.”

When the plane went down, just a quarter mile from the end of the 10,500-foot runway, the temperature was 30 degrees and a mixture of rain and snow had been falling. Grainy snow was still in the air.

Galipault said that there are only three reasons why a pilot would not order de-icing under such conditions. “It’s a question of time and money, or he looks out of the window and says there’s no ice there,” he said. The cost of de-icing a DC-8 with alcohol-based fluid ranges from $1,000 to $4,000, Galipault said.

The plane was on the ground here from 5:30 a.m. local time Thursday until it lifted off just before 6:50 a.m.

Weather Report Received

Airport officials said that would have been sufficient time to de-ice the aircraft as well as to take on needed fuel and other supplies.

As to whether ice was seen on the wings, Boag said air traffic controllers told him that the flight engineer on the plane made a visual inspection of the wings and that the pilot asked for and received a weather report. Neither man indicated any concern, Boag said.

The air-traffic controllers in the terminal tower also spotted no problems, he added.

“When it (the plane) was cleared for takeoff,” the Canadian official said, “nothing unusual was observed by ATC (air traffic control) personnel or heard by ATC personnel until they observed a fire ball.”

The tower received no radio communications from the plane in the seconds before the crash, he said.

The Mounties, who are in charge of all but the most technical aspects of the crash, said that no debris was found along the runway or away from the actual crash site, tending to rule out the possibility that pieces of the craft had fallen away before it smashed into the ground.

Boag also implied that the crash was not the result of overweight, noting that the total weight of the plane, including 101,000 pounds of jet fuel it had just taken on, “was within allowable limits.”

In Washington, the Pentagon dismissed a claim made by an anonymous caller in Beirut to a Western news agency that the fundamentalist group Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) was responsible for the crash.

‘Nothing Ruled Out’

Christiane Beaulieu, the safety board’s chief spokeswoman, reacted cautiously to questions from reporters about possible sabotage. “Nothing has been ruled out. . . . Everything that comes up in an investigation is given consideration,” she said.

When the plane took off to the south, it veered to the right at the end of the runway, cleared the Trans-Canada Highway, and clipped the tops of 40-foot spruce and birch trees.

The plane traveled another 300 yards before the tail struck the ground, just at the top of a gentle incline, and began breaking apart.

Debris and bodies were strewn along a half-mile long, 200-yard-wide swath. The largest piece of the plane found intact was a 20-foot section of the fuselage with an engine attached.

Thousands of smaller pieces were scattered toward the shore of Gander Lake, some hanging in tree branches. All the plane’s engines were found in the wreckage.

What remained of the plane skidded to a stop about 300 yards from Gander Lake, which was polluted by oil and jet fuel that spewed from ruptured tanks.

Scattered in trees and among the charred wreckage were the wrappings from Christmas presents the passengers had been taking home. On the ground near a battered landing gear was an infant-sized red dress with white trimming.

Close by was a pile of civilian clothes that included souvenir sweatshirts reading “I survived Gander, Newfoundland,” that the soldiers had bought at the airport’s duty-free shops.