Glass in Many Jet Cockpit Dials Found Unbroken

Glass was unbroken in many of the dials in the crushed cockpit of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, indicating a suspected explosion did not occur in that portion of the airplane, investigators said Tuesday.

Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, also said that the light fixture and bulb at the top of the distinctive spiral staircase to the plane’s upper level were unbroken.

Francis said investigators are just beginning to unravel the one-ton mass of twisted metal and wire that has been identified as the cockpit area. But he said technicians were struck with the fact that the glass in “lots of dials” was not shattered.

“There is no indication at this point of anything that would give cause for concern in terms of something that was initiated there,” Francis said. Salvage workers were hoping to lift the cockpit’s windshield portion Tuesday night from the murky ocean floor 120 feet below the surface and about 10 miles off the Long Island coast.

If further tests indicate there was no explosion in the cockpit or the upper section behind the cockpit, then whatever event brought down the plane and killed all 230 people likely originated in the forward cargo hold or upstairs in or near the first-class section. That also would eliminate as a possible hiding place for a bomb a box of corneas loaded in the cockpit at the last moment for transplant operations in France.

Whatever its source, the FBI has said repeatedly there was an explosion in the Boeing 747, although the agency has never fully explained why it is so certain. “We know there was a catastrophic explosion on the plane, but we don’t know what caused it,” James Kallstrom, head of the FBI’s New York office, said at a news briefing Tuesday.

Investigators are hopeful that the recent recovery of a one-ton portion of the jumbo jet’s cockpit will provide them with further clues as to what exactly caused the Paris-bound plane to erupt into a fireball and slam into the Atlantic Ocean. But it may be some time before investigators are able to untangle the severely mangled wreckage.

Francis said that U.S. Navy salvage ships and divers have so far recovered 15% to 20% of the aircraft and that no more bodies were retrieved Tuesday, leaving the total number of victims recovered to date at 195.