recovery company in the US, was contracted at great expense to find the site and recover the flight recorders. The search area is described as being comparable in size to that of the wreck of the Titanic, with the water at being considerably deeper than any previously successful salvage operation. The wreckage was found within two days of Steadfast Oceaneering commencing its search. Three debris fields were found: , and . These locations were spread , and apart, indicating that the aircraft broke up in mid-air (it was suggested that the tail separated first). On 6 January 1989, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was salvaged successfully from a record depth of by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Gemini, but the flight data recorder was never found. Van Zyl took the voice recorder to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington, DC, both to show his goodwill and to ensure neutral observers. Van Zyl believes that if he kept the CVR in South Africa he could have been accused of covering up the truth. At the NTSB, Van Zyl felt frustration that the degraded (but still functional) CVR, which had been in the deep ocean for fourteen months, did not initially yield any useful information. Around twenty-eight minutes into the recording the CVR indicated that the fire alarm sounded. Fourteen seconds after the fire alarm, the circuit breakers began to pop. Investigators believe that around eighty circuit breakers failed. The CVR cable failed eighty-one seconds after the alarm. The recording revealed the extent of the fire. Van Zyl discovered that the front-right pallet located in the main deck's cargo hold was the seat of the fire. The flight manifest said that pallet mostly comprised computers in polystyrene packaging. The investigators said that the localised fire likely came in contact with the packaging and produced gases that accumulated near the ceiling. They also said that gases ignited into a flash fire that affected the entire cargo hold. The fire did not burn lower than one metre above the cargo floor. The walls and ceiling of the cargo hold received severe fire damage. Van Zyl ended his investigation without discovering why the fire started. The official report noted the presence of the computer equipment, and suggested that a possible cause could have been the lithium batteries contained in the computers exploding or spontaneously combusting, although this was not given as a