Sunken Navy Planes Not the Lost Squadron

Five World War II-era Navy planes found off the Florida coast are not the Lost Squadron, and the mix-up will only reinforce the myth of the Bermuda Triangle, baffled explorers said Tuesday.

Graham Hawkes, leader of a team aboard the high-tech treasure-hunting ship Deep See, said more detailed examination of the Navy Avengers spotted last month by a remote camera showed that they are not the planes of Flight 19, which vanished on Dec. 5, 1945.

Flight 19 disappeared during a training flight that was to include a bombing run on a deserted Bahamian island. Radio transmissions heard at its base at Ft. Lauderdale indicated that the pilots had become disoriented while flying toward the Bahamas and believed that they were over the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico.

No trace of planes or pilots was ever found. Their disappearance helped fuel the myth of the Bermuda Triangle, an area bounded by Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico in which ships and planes supposedly have vanished mysteriously.