A French nuclear submarine joined the hunt Wednesday for the black box recorder of a downed Air France flight in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The submarine will scour 13 square miles a day to try and detect the signals that plane recorders give off for 30 days. Finding the recorder could be key to discovering what brought down the plane, which was carrying 228 people when it crashed into the ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Experts said it will be difficult to find the recorder, even with sophisticated French and U.S. naval technology assisting in the search. A Dutch ship contracted by French investigators leading the inquiry into the crash will head out tomorrow and arrive in the search area by Sunday. So far, 41 bodies have been recovered from the scene of the crash, about 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast. Debris has also been recovered by a French frigate, and it being cleaned of salt before analysis as part of the inquiry. The inquiry is currently investigating a theory that the plane crashed after external sensors froze, producing inaccurate measurements that resulted in the plane's computer setting speeds too fast or slow. But it will be hard for investigators to either confirm or rule out that possibility without recovering the recorder.
