EAST MORICHES, New York: In a major breakthrough, divers recovered both "black boxes" from TWA Flight 800 early Thursday morning after locating them in the wreckage of the plane's tail section, 100 feet below the ocean's surface. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders were flown immediately to Washington D.C., submerged in water to prevent damage to the data from drying too quickly. Experts there will analyze the boxes today for clues to the cause of the explosion that brought down the 747-100 one week ago, killing all 230 aboard. "This seemed to give the recovery crews a second wind," reports TIME's Elaine Rivera from the recovery command center in East Moriches. "It's really the best news they've heard all week. Spirits seemed to be sagging earlier in the day." The devices appeared to be in good condition. If functional, they could indicate whether the crew was aware of a problem and if so, how they responded, or if the plane's equipment malfunctioned. That information may help investigators determine whether the plane was brought down by a bomb, missile or mechanical failure. The electronic homing pinger was reportedly missing from one box and the pinger on the other was operational but apparently shielded, complicating the recovery effort. Divers also recovered the remains of three more people from the wreckage on Wednesday. As of this morning, 116 of the 230 people aboard were still unaccounted for, but Francis said that divers have sighted seven additional bodies in the wreckage. The recovery of bodies is the divers' top priority. Rivera reports that six teams, about 75 divers in all, rotate shifts. In each team, divers work in pairs and spend about 15 minutes underwater on each dive. "The divers are going down with videocameras and are taping the sites," Rivera says. "They need to plan how they're going to bring the debris to the surface. They're trying to record serial numbers and identify each part." Searchers have located a large section of fuselage which they believe may contain the remains of dozens more victims. The fuselage lies in a debris field one and a half miles long and about half a mile wide. "The divers say the most difficult problem is having so many target areas. The wreckage is not together in one clump," Rivera reports. --Scot Woods

4:49 PM ET

TIME Daily: July 23, 1996

EAST MORICHES, N.Y.: A chemical residue was found on some victims' bodies and on plane parts recovered from the wreckage site of TWA Flight 800, White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta told reporters Tuesday, but it is still unclear whether the residue comes from a bomb or is simply the result of an explosion after a mechanical failure -- a theory investigators refuse to throw out. Also on Tuesday, contradicting news reports of an earlier test finding, a wing fragment from the downed TWA jet has shown no traces of explosives. Original tests by the ATF had indicated that there was explosive residue on the recovered piece. But on Tuesday, officials from the National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI urged caution, saying later testing came up negative. Investigators hope to examine a large piece of metal that is expected to be salvaged from the wreckage site, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island. Some officials have said publicly that they fear time and salt water will wear away any traces of a bomb, but explosives experts tell TIME Washington correspondent Elaine Shannon that sea water would not entirely erase nitrate residues from the plane. Other clues investigators will look for include the direction in which particular pieces of the wreckage were bent, and the relative heat damage to certain parts, which could indicate the precise source and direction of the explosion. Says TIME's Mark Thompson: "Those large pieces are going to make clear whether it was a missile from the outside, a bomb from the inside, or simply mechanical failure that caused the explosion." So far, 109 of the 230 bodies have been recovered from the crash site; 68 of the victims have been positively identified. FBI New York chief James Kallstrom told The New York Times that there are at least 40 more bodies near the sunken fuselage that was located Monday afternoon. Until all are recovered, they remain the priority for the Navy divers. -- Jenifer Mattos

Patience, Guys

The Fourth Estate has had to backpedal more than once on new reports about the crash cause. Monday, major daily headlines stated that debris from the TWA wreckage tested positive for traces of explosives residue, citing unnamed government officials. This was at least the third time stories based on leaked information turned out to be wrong. On Friday, CNN reported that FBI officials were on the verge of announcing that they were taking over the investigation because they had evidence a bomb was involved. That never happened. And on Thursday, it was reported that the mysterious black box had been recovered. So far, that too has not happened. -- Jenifer Mattos

A Breakthrough in the Search

EAST MORICHES, N.Y.: After three days of fruitless searches for bodies and major parts of the TWA plane wreckage, search crews found remains of four people and major sections of the plane. The first word of the discovery came Monday afternoon from New York Governor George Pataki during a memorial service for families of the victims near the Long Island seashore. NTSB Vice Chairman Robert Francis confirmed that the bodies and a trail of wreckage were found about approximately nine miles from the shore in a three-by-four-mile area. While Francis called Monday's discovery "a major find," he would not speculate on exactly how much of the plane had been located or how many more bodies might be in the vicinity. Rough winds and equipment failures had hindered the recovery efforts over the weekend, when less than one percent of the plane had been recovered. Fewer than half of the 230 passengers aboard have been found so far. -- Anita Hamilton

CR: TIM PERSHING -- TOM KELLER & ASSOC.

Explosion in the Darkness
As rescue teams continued the grim task of recovering the bodies of the 230 people aboard TWA Flight 800, the causes of the catastrophic explosion that sent the 747 plunging into the Atlantic off the coast of New York Wednesday night remained unknown. Despite the extraordinary level of U.S. concern over possible terrorism during the Olympics, which begin Friday, President Clinton cautioned Americans to refrain from speculation on the causes of the disaster. "We do not know what caused this tragedy," he said in a White House press conference. "We have no evidence on this flight yet that would indicate the cause of the accident." Though no jumbo jet has ever exploded in mid-air except in cases of sabotage, experts said it was still too early to rule out an engine explosion or other major technical failure. These reports were underscored by an early eyewitness report that at least one of the victims was wearing a fully-inflated life jacket, which would indicate that the passengers had some warning of the impending disaster. While families waited to identify the more than 100 victims pulled from the sea overnight, hundreds of investigators from the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the National Transportation Safety Board and other agencies were searching a hundred-mile stretch of coastline temporary classified as a crime scene for any clues that might reveal the reasons for the crash. TIME Online's Lisa Granatstein reports from the crash site that investigators were beginning to recover large pieces of the airliner, including the emergency exit chutes that deploy automatically when a plane crashes. Several diplomatic pouches were recovered overnight. The flight is a regular commuting run for diplomats from the United Nations and State Department employees. Granatstein adds that about a dozen packages recovered from the site this morning were being treated with extreme caution as contaminated material; rumors that the packages contained HIV-contaminated blood could not be confirmed. A heavy shipboard construction crane arrived at the site early this morning for use in recovering the wreckage, which sank in some 120 feet of water. The 8:40 p.m. explosion, minutes after the passenger jet departed JFK airport en route to Paris, was witnessed by large numbers of coastal residents, who described a fireball that separated into two large pieces, plunging into the Atlantic. Many people in the beach communities near the Hamptons on Long Island at first mistook the flames in the sky for fireworks, until they realized the explosion was far too large. Among the first of hundreds of rescue aircraft, ships and helicopters to reach the site was a National Guard C-130 practicing search-and-rescue procedures nearby, whose pilot witnessed the horrific crash and immediately circled the area, identifying the wreckage and reporting back to his commanders. Rescue craft arriving overnight from as far away as Cape Cod, Massachusetts were supplemented by dozens of private boats borrowed by rescue teams frantically hoping to save some lives. As fishermen and other local residents helped recover the bodies of the victims, a temporary morgue was set up near the little town of East Moriches close to the crash site. Local officials cautioned residents to report any wreckage or bodies washing ashore in the next day or so, but not to touch anything that may serve as evidence that could explain what made the TWA jumbo jet suddenly disintegrate in the darkness. - Janice Castro with Lisa Granatstein

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