The huge Boeing Co. 777 jet, almost as long as a Manhattan city block and taller than a five-story building, had somehow managed to make itself invisible in the clear night sky. There were 239 people on board. Ensuing search operations combed through some of the deepest ocean floors in the inhospitable southern Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles off Australia’s western seaboard, and found no trace of the main fuselage or any passengers and crew. Of the 3 million components in the 777, just a few fragments washed ashore years later on the east African coast.