By Shani Raja and Robb M. Stewart
SYDNEY--A U.K. military submarine has arrived in the southern
Indian Ocean equipped to detect signals from missing Malaysia
Airlines Flight 370's "black-box" flight recorders.
The deployment of HMS Tireless bolsters a multinational search
for the missing Boeing 777-200 that has so far relied on a
combination of satellite images, radar data and crews scanning from
the windows of aircraft to look for wreckage floating in an area of
sea the size of Arizona.
HMS Tireless was sent to the search area--which is mostly an
unmapped part of the Indian Ocean--even though no plane debris has
been found confirming search teams are looking in the right
place.
HMS Tireless is a nuclear-powered submarine built for the Royal
Navy as a Cold War attack vehicle. It is part of a fleet of
so-called Trafalgar-class submarines designed to hunt for and
destroy enemy subs and surface ships. The underwater vehicles are
also sometimes used to shadow friendly vessels and to carry out
surveillance along coastlines.
In 2011, HMS Tireless supported British troops and vessels in
the Middle East. It's being sent to the southern Indian Ocean now
because equipment on board may enable it to pinpoint signals from
MH370's flight-data and cockpit voice recorders.
It could also be used to search for aircraft wreckage along the
largely undisturbed seabed, a spokeswoman for the U.K.'s defense
ministry said. The roughly 85-meter long submarine can carry a crew
of about 130 and has a top speed of 32 knots.
On Wednesday, nine military aircraft and an equal number of
ships searched an area of sea around 1,500 kilometers (932 miles)
northwest of the Western Australian state capital of Perth.
Australian authorities say the area remains their best bet for
finding the plane, but haven't ruled out the possibility they may
be looking in the wrong place. They calculate there might be less
than a week left before Flight 370's black-box flight recorders
stop emitting signals strong enough to help searchers locate them
deep underwater.
With time running out, authorities are calling for more help.
The U.K. defense ministry has also sent HMS Echo-a military survey
vessel that can map the depths of the ocean-to the search zone. HMS
Echo had been stationed in the Gulf. The ministry said the ship
would be able to aid the search for the black-box transponder and
to hunt for debris on the sea's surface.
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said earlier
this week he would ask his counterparts from the U.S. and the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations for high-tech equipment that
could search deep below the ocean's surface.
An Australian vessel carrying a U.S. Navy black-box locator that
can detect flight-recorder signals left from Perth for the search
area Monday night. Ocean Shield, a vessel built to operate in
Antarctic weather, is expected to arrive in the search area by
April 5-leaving the device as little as two days to locate any
recorders in depths of some 2,000 to 4,000 meters (6,500 to 13,000
feet).
The beefed-up search effort comes as Malaysian Prime Minister
Najib Razak was set to visit Perth in a show of support for the
operation, which has already drawn in aircrews from China, Japan,
South Korea and New Zealand, as well as several commercial and
military ships.
Malaysia's police chief Wednesday tried to lower expectations of
a quick and conclusive determination of what caused the
disappearance of Flight 370, but asked for patience as
investigators question more people.
Malaysian investigators believe Flight 370 crashed in the
southern Indian Ocean when it ran out of fuel, thousands of
kilometers from the nearest airport, after disappearing from
civilian radar on March 8. All of the 239 passengers and crew are
assumed dead.
Australian authorities abruptly shifted the search zone in the
southern Indian Ocean some 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) to the
northeast last week, to about 1,850 kilometers west of Perth, based
on new calculations of the radar data. Wednesday's search, closer
to Australia's coastline than before, overlaps part of the area
already inspected by military aircrews.
Now in its fourth week, the search for Flight 370 has yielded
little except satellite images and aerial photographs of objects
that haven't been linked to the missing plane. Numerous ships
engaged in the hunt have hauled in only unrelated scraps of junk in
an area where currents frequently bring together floating
garbage.
Also on Wednesday, Malaysian officials met for more than two and
a half hours with relatives of Chinese passengers on the missing
plane in a bid to settle unanswered questions.
A group of 29 relatives from 18 families met with officials at a
hotel outside Kuala Lumpur. The meeting followed the families'
high-profile arrival in Malaysia from Beijing over the weekend.
They held up banners, demanded answers from officials and
complained Malaysian representatives in Beijing hadn't been able to
answer their questions.
The meeting at the Hotel Bangi-Putrajaya was calm, Malaysia's
civil aviation chief said. "They are not hostile," Director-General
Azharuddin Abdul Razak said. "We had a very good
question-and-answer." Mr. Azharuddin refused to give further
details except to say that officials had answered whatever
questions the relatives had posed.
-Rebecca Howard in Wellington and Jason Ng in Kuala Lumpur
contributed to this article.
Write to Shani Raja at shani.raja@wsj.com and Robb M. Stewart
at
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