FILE: FLT-19.TXT AUTHOR: Associated Press DATE: 1990? SUBJECT: Theory on the Fate of Missing Flight 19 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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..."