FLIGHT 19

Jon Myhre's solution was videotaped for a segment on NBC TV's "unsolved Mysteries" last week.

But doubters include the Navy, Smithsonian Institution, six publishers who rejected his book manuscript and People magazine, which held Myhre's story after buying exclusive rights to his account.

"I've given it my best shot. I've done everything I can do," said Myhre, of Lantana, who has spent his life savings of more than $100,000 to plot and pursue Flight 19's five Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. "I know I'm right. I'm just not in a position to prove it." Myhre has videotape, shot from a mini-submarine in July, of an upside-down Avenger sitting in 390 feet of water about 35 miles off Cape Canaveral, but he doesn't have its serial number.

The plane, just 2.5 miles from where Myhre predicted Flight 19 went down, was originally spotted during the search for debris from the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, but it was ignored then.

Flight 19's disappearance became part of the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area where ships and planes supposedly disappear under mysterious circumstances involving UFOs, magnetic fields and other such phenomena. Flight 19 even figured in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," in which first the planes and then the men were returned by aliens.

Myhre's answer to the puzzle came with a flash eight years ago when he read the final radio transmissions form the warplanes, which tool off from Fort Lauderdale for a training flight over parts of the Bahamas on Dec. 5, 1945.

The squadron leader's reported that both of his compasses were out of order. At one point, the squadron leader plotted a northeasterly course based on the assumption he has somehow reached the Florida Keys, on the opposite side of Florida. Myhre thinks that was part of the Bahamas' Abacos chain.

At another point he reported he was over an island an no other land was visible.

Myhre, who has flown the region for years, believes that was isolated Walker's Cay.

By re-plotting the flight form Walker's Cay, using the Navy transcriptions of the flight's radio reports, Myhre came up with a location where he thought Flight 19, its planes out of fuel, may have ended.

The spot was east of Cape Canaveral. The Avenger he filmed was found 2.5 miles away.

Mayhre learned of the plane spotted during the Challenger search from news reports. This summer, with $25,000 raised by two partners, he hired a small research submarine and located the wreckage.

He was unable to locate a complete aircraft serial number on the upside down wreck.

Footage of the Avenger shows the last three digits--209-- of a five digit Navy service number on the left wingtip. Flight 19's lead airplane number was 73209, and Navy records show only two other Grumman TBM Avengers with a service number ending in 209, and neither was lost at sea.

"The only thing we didn't get was a positive ID on the plane's serial number," Myhre said, but raising the Avenger could cost $250,000.

The plane's landing gear is extended, leading some to suggest that plane was lost while trying to land on an aircraft carrier instead of the squadron's suspected ditch.

But Myhre insists he has the right plane and knows where the others are.

"The other planes are further north in much deeper water, I'm certain," he said. "This was just the first to ditch. And the tragic thing about it is he was only about seven minutes from land. If they'd just kept going west..."

FLIGHT 19 NOT FOUND

The mythic mystery of the Bermuda Triangle remained intact Tuesday with the revelation that the Navy Avengers found off the coast of Fort Lauderdale are not the Lost Squadron that vanished 45 years ago.

Instead of Flight 19 - the five torpedo bombers that disappeared while on a routine training mission from Fort Lauderdale - salvors found the Phantom Five.

"For those who really want to weave a mystery, instead of one group of fighter Avengers downed in the Bermuda Triangle, we've now given you two," said Graham Hawkes, whose high-tech vessel, Deep See, stumbled upon the cluster of five Avengers last month while exploring for sunken galleons 10 miles offshore.

The big question is how the Avengers, dubbed Phantom Five by the Deep See crew, wound up on the ocean floor within 1 1/2 miles of each other.

While at least 139 World War II-era Avengers were lost in the waters of Florida's coast, there is no record of five Avengers other than Flight 19 sinking together.

One of the greatest puzzles in aviation history, Flight 19's disappearance helped spawn the legend of the Bermuda Triangle and its mysterious forces. About 50 planes and ships have disappeared without a trace in the patch of ocean between Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico.

Hawkes contends - and evidence reviewed by an independent wreckage research firm supports - that the group didn't sink together but independently over a period of several years. The explanation for their close proximity? Planes concentrated over the site because it was the target of low-level bombing practice.

Historian Roy Grossnick, who heads the aviation history branch of the Naval Historical Center in Washington, said the Navy needed more information to confirm theories about the Phantom Five.

The grouping, number and type of the Phantom Five aircraft fueled initial speculation last month that the Deep See crew found the remains of Flight 19, which vanished with 14 crewmen on Dec. 5, 1945.

One of the sunken planes bore the number 28 on its wing, the same number on the plane Flight 19 lead pilot Charles "C.C." Taylor was flying. Two of the planes bore the letters FT, the same letters that Flight 19 used to designate their base as teh Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station.

But closer inspection revealed that the aircraft have different numbers and are older Avenger models than those in Flight 19. The plane bearing the 28 may even have a third digit, Hawkes said.

The news was bittersweet for the relatives of Flight 19's crewmen,, only one of whom was married.

While nobody knows where the crew of Flight 19 rests, Hawkes said the men aboard the Phantom Five met a better fate. no human remains were evident aboard the planes and, with the exception of the one bearing the 28, the aircraft are intact and showed damage consistent with intentional ditching. Their canopies were open, indicating the crews exited on the surface, Hawkes said.

The Deep See crewmen are continuing their search for sunken treasure. And if they stumble on another five planes, they threaten to keep quiet about it.

"If we find five more it will just confirm out theory there's a lot of aliens playing with us," Hawkes said.

end.