Relatives Of 230 Killed Aboard Twa Flight 800 Visit A Sacred, Sad Place

CALVERTON, N.Y. - The reconstructed wreckage of TWA Flight 800, towering above the hangar floor, has evoked a variety of responses from families of the 230 people killed when the jetliner exploded - tears, prayers, stunned silence.

Joe Lychner, standing before the doomed aircraft, couldn't take his eyes from the tiny windows of the Boeing 747. The Houston man who lost his wife and two daughters in the crash was thankful that the rear section of the airplane - where his family had been sitting - was still missing.

"I wouldn't want to be looking up at the windows they were looking out of," he said. "That would be unbearable."

A day after announcing their multimillion-dollar global investigation had found no evidence that a missile or bomb had brought down the plane off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996, the FBI opened the hangar yesterday to reporters and victims' families. Some, including Lychner, had been here before.

"You can't look at the plane without seeing the souls of those who were lost," said James Kallstrom, head of the FBI's New York office, "and at the same time think of the strength and courage of the families of these victims."

The National Transportation Safety Board is still hunting for the cause of the explosion, but isn't expected to discuss preliminary findings until next year. Its efforts have focused on the center fuel tank, believed to be the source of the explosion.

The wreckage, most of it recovered from the ocean by divers, is more than 1 million parts crudely attached to metal scaffolding. Like pieces of an unfinished model, wires, tires and metal still lie on the hangar floor. The fuselage is scorched and scratched, especially over the center fuel tank.

Just as haunting as the windows are the plane's seats, which sit reassembled in another area of the hangar on strips of carpeting retrieved from the water.

The first time he went to the hangar, Lychner said he was consumed with thoughts about his family's suffering. That has since given way to anger.

"If this was not criminal, it could have been avoided," he said.

There was talk of donating the wreckage to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington for the world to study and view, but the victims' families balked.

"We don't want this to be a spectacle," Lychner said. "For the families this is a sacred place."