THE TENSION: Wire: US Navy "Towed Pinger Locator" to Search for Flight 447 Black Boxes

DULLES, Va. (June 8, 2009) Kevin Pollard ties down a 15,000-pound undersea cable for transportation to Brazil. The cable, capable of reaching a depth of 20,000 feet, will be attached to an underwater pinger locator from Naval Sea Systems Command's Supervisor of Salvage and Diving to help locate the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of an Air France passenger aircraft that went down in the Atlantic Ocean. (U.S. Navy photo by Oscar Sosa.)

DULLES, Va. (June 8, 2009) A Naval Sea Systems Command Supervisor of Salvage and Diving control van is loaded onto a transport aircraft for transportation to Brazil. U.S. Navy search equipment, including an underwater pinger locator, is being sent to help locate the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of an Air France passenger aircraft that went down in the Atlantic Ocean. (U.S. Navy photo by Oscar Sosa.)

This Pinger Locator System was part of the Navy equipment transported to the crash site of TWA Flight 800 and used by the Navy in an attempt to locate the aircraft's flight data recorders more commonly known as Black Boxes. The PLS is a highly sensitive, underwater microphone which is towed in the water to listen for the pingers located on the flight data recorders. (U.S. Navy photo.)

Off the Wire:

WASHINGTON, June 14, 2009 -- Newswire services this afternoon reported that a Dutch ship towing a high-tech, U.S. Navy listening device was set to troll the Atlantic on Sunday in search of data and voice recorders that investigators say are key to determining what caused an Air France jet to crash in the Atlantic with 228 people on board.

The Navy device, called a "Towed Pinger Locator," or TPL, will try to detect emergency audio beacons, or pings, emitted by Flight 447's black boxes, which could be lying thousands of feet below the ocean surface, according to an Associated Press report.

AP noted that without the recorders, it may be impossible to ever know what caused the Airbus A330 to crash several hundred miles off Brazil's northeastern coast on May 31, experts have said.

AP reported the following details:

The TPL has search capacities up to a depth of 20,000 feet (6,100 meters). The first of two devices was towed in Sunday by a Dutch ship contracted by France, said U.S. Air Force Col. Willie Berges, chief of the U.S. military liaison office in Brazil and commander of the American military forces supporting the search operation.

Berges said the TPL would start operating as soon as searchers were sure it would not interfere with a black-box search being conducted in the same area by a French nuclear submarine.

Another Dutch ship carrying a second listening device is scheduled to arrive no later than Monday morning, Berges said.

The ships will tow the TPLs in a grid pattern while 10-person teams watch for signals on computer screens, Berges said.

The search area includes some of the deepest waters of the Atlantic — and in two more weeks the boxes' signals will begin to fade.