Probe Turns to Flight 800 Cockpit Puzzle

Investigators looking for clues to the TWA Flight 800 disaster worked to untangle a ton of twisted metal, gauges and wires Monday that were once part of the cockpit.

Nineteen days after the crash, the examination of the demolished cockpit held out the prospect of advancing an investigation that so far has been unable to explain why the 747 jetliner blew up in flight, killing all 230 aboard.

The mass of electronics below the cockpit looks like “the most compressed mumble-jumble of stuff that I’ve ever seen,” said James K. Kallstrom, who is heading the FBI investigation.

“This is like a big ball of string,” Kallstrom said. “There’s really no way of making any sense out of it until you take it all apart.”

Investigators from the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board, TWA and Boeing examined the wreckage at a hangar on Long Island.

Investigators have made clear that unraveling the mystery will be a long and difficult task. While they suspect a bomb destroyed the plane, they have not ruled out a catastrophic mechanical failure or the possibility that the jumbo jet was hit by a missile.

No physical evidence has been found to confirm suspicions of sabotage.

Investigators also said the flight-data recorder and the cockpit-voice recorder failed to provide any information that would sway the investigation or even explain what caused the split-second sound recorded in the cockpit just before the plane exploded.

“I’m afraid for the moment, at least, we’re kind of at the end” with the tapes, said NTSB vice chairman Robert Francis.

Searchers said one more body had been pulled to the surface Monday, raising the number of victims recovered to 195 and leaving 35 missing.

At the crash site 10 miles off Long Island, Navy salvage ships muscled more wreckage to the surface in hopes of finding some of the remaining bodies trapped beneath it. Remote-controlled video cameras scanned debris, and divers rigged debris so it could be lifted.

“We’d recovered all the bodies we could without moving wreckage,” Navy Cmdr. Ron Morse said.

A 15- to 20-foot chunk of the battered fuselage was brought ashore by barge. The half-cylindrical section with interior metal ribs appeared to be from the plane’s silver underbelly.

Investigators still have recovered only a small part of the Paris-bound jetliner. They are particularly interested in finding the front cargo bay, where they suspect a bomb may have been hidden.

It was unclear how many of the cockpit’s 900 gauges and dials and gadgets were in the recovered section. An instrument panel could yield clues about engine speed or how the plane was reacting.

Francis called the cockpit section an “extraordinary puzzle” that would have to be meticulously studied.

Kallstrom has said he is concerned that delays in bringing wreckage to the surface might make it more difficult to find traces of any explosives, which may have been washed away in the waves.

“Whether or not some of it’s been washed away, or 90% of it or 50% of it or 10% of it, I really don’t know,” he said.