INVESTIGATORS yesterday located two engines amid the wreckage of doomed TWA Flight 1800 giving them a major break in determining whether a bomb blew apart the Paris bound jet killing 230 people.
It was the second major discovery in 72 hours after days of frustration. The engines could show signs of mechanical failure or the clear impact of an explosive device.
The number of bodies pulled from the Atlantic rose to 138 yesterday.
Investigators late n Wednesday pulled up the plane's "black boxes" and discovered a brief unexplained sound on the cockpit voice recorder just before it fell silent. Experts said this showed that whatever happened on board came without warning, a sign they said pointed to a bomb as the most likely explanation.
Officials told reporters it maybe some time before the engines, weighing between 7,000 and 9,000 lb, can be brought to the surface. The vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Mr Robert Francis, said he did not yet know their condition or whether they showed any evidence of what caused the crash.
Rear Admiral Edward Kristensen of the US navy said that although the engines would not be lifted out of the ocean during the day, they would he examined underwater. "One of the things we want to look at is using the remote video and optics to perhaps answer questions about those engines without having to lift them out to divert actions from recovery of victims," he said.
Meanwhile, NTSB experts in Washington conducted sophisticated tests on the mysterious split second of sound at the end of the cockpit tape. Among things they were trying to find out was whether the sound was similar to the last noise recorded on Pam Am Flight 103, which was destroyed by a bomb over Lockerbie in December 1988.