Stony Creek, Pa. — Investigators Wednesday began what may be a weekslong search for bodies and clues amid growing speculation that United Airlines Flight 93, commandeered by hijackers, had been headed for Washington when it crashed into a remote hillside.
"There is a general assumption it was headed for Washington," U.S. Rep. Joseph Hoeffel, D.-Pa., said Wednesday after attending a confidential briefing on Tuesday's crash. "What the target was, whether it was the White House or some other national symbol. No one knows for sure."
FBI investgators comb the crater left by the crash of United Airlines flight 93, a Boeing 757, in Shanksville, Pa. Analysts said recovery of Flight 93's cockpit voice recorder could be key in determining what caused the plane to crash Tuesday. FBI assistant agent in charge Roland Corvington said Wednesday that more than 200 investigators were on the scene and that the search might continue for three to five weeks.
Flight 93 was the last of four planes that crashed in an apparent coordinated series of terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. Forty-five passengers and crew were killed when the plane slammed into a hillside 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
The plane's "black box" likely is the key to discovering what happened aboard the Boeing 757 before witnesses said it banked sharply, flipped over and virtually disintegrated upon impact at around 10 a.m., investigators said Wednesday.
Finding that box, which records flight data and cockpit conversations, is a top priority, said FBI agent Roland Corvington, head of the recovery effort in Somerset County. The box, which actually is orange in color, is believed to be somewhere in a 10-foot-deep crater that is studded with pieces of fuselage ? a chilling testament to the force of the plane's impact.
"I can't stress enough the importance of the (black box's) data," Corvington told reporters Wednesday at the crash site, where 80 investigators from FBI offices in Pennsylvania, Chicago, Cincinnati and Detroit meticulously scoured an area about three miles in radius with help from the state police.
They placed yellow and red flags next to each scrap of wreckage or human remains they found. Among the items was what seemed to be part of an engine, said Lt. Col. Robert Hickes of the state police.
Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller said teams of forensic anthropologists and archeologists from other states were on their way to help identify victims. In many cases, microscopic analysis of DNA samples will be required, he said.
"The search is painstaking and probably will last three to five weeks," Corvington said.
Meanwhile, investigators continued trying to piece together what happened inside the airplane before it crashed. Its pilots had not communicated with any controllers in the area, and its path seemed erratic.
Dennis Fritz, chief air traffic controller at the Johnstown airport, said he ordered the evacuation of nonessential employees at the tower and the airport around 10 a.m. Tuesday after being alerted to "a large aircraft 20 miles to the south."
Air traffic controllers from Cleveland had first called Johnstown's tower around 9:40 a.m., Fritz said, alerting controllers there to a plane that had reached the Cleveland area from the east then headed south before turning east again.
"They said they had identified an aircraft that was making some unusual maneuvers," Fritz said. "When they called back a minute later, it was 15 miles away. They suggested we evacuate the tower and the airport because they didn't know what was going to happen here. The aircraft was not communicating."
At that point, Cleveland air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, Fritz said, and Johnstown controllers, scanning the horizon with binoculars, never saw it.
"They were probably at an altitude below the ridge line, 3,000 feet or below," Fritz said.
Shortly after that, Flight 93 crashed, scattering wreckage and bodies over the rural countryside.
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