Theory on the Fate of Missing Flight 19

Date: 07-03-91  07:38

From: William Brinner

AUTHOR:   Associated Press

DATE:     1990?

SUBJECT:  Theory on the Fate of Missing Flight 19

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            THEORY SURFACES ON FINAL FATE OF FLIGHT 19

  MIAMI (AP)--A former air traffic controller is positive he has unraveled the

secret of Flight 19, five navy torpedo bombers that vanished in 1945 and fed

the Bermuda Triangle legend, but getting proof is going to be expensive.

  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..."