Search crews Friday found the cockpit voice recorder from United Flight 93 that could reveal whether passengers tried to gain control of the hijacked plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
The "black box" was discovered some 7.5m deep in the crash site crater, FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi said. It was sent to the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington.
FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said the recorder appears to be "in fairly good shape," citing descriptions by those who found it.
The recorder is designed to capture at least the last 30 minutes of cockpit conversation. The plane's other black box, the flight data recorder, was found Thursday.
The Boeing 757 left Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday morning, bound for San Francisco. Radar showed the plane was over Cleveland when it abruptly turned back east, began losing altitude and flying erratically before it crashed in western Pennsylvania.
Mobile phone calls made by passengers to relatives before the crash suggested they planned to wrest control of the jet from the hijackers and prevent the plane from becoming a missile like the ones that toppled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
Some have speculated that the hijackers planned to target Camp David in Maryland, the Capitol or even the White House.
In a tribute Friday night that brought friends and relatives of the dead to tears, Governor Tom Ridge called some of the passengers heroes for battling their captors.
"The passengers on that plane decided to fight back their hijackers," Ridge said at a vigil attended by thousands. "They undoubtedly saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives in the process. They sacrificed themselves for others -- the ultimate sacrifice."
"What appears to be a charred, smoldering hole in the ground is truly and really a monument to heroism," he said.
About 80 friends and relatives, none who spoke at the service, were escorted by police and Red Cross workers past a crowd estimated at 3,000 to attend the vigil. Many cried as they waved candles and flags while singing God Bless America.
Earlier, volunteers at the crash site led a prayer service. Heeding President George W. Bush's call for a national day of prayer, Salvation Army and Red Cross workers prayed and sang Amazing Grace.
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