Chagrined explorers said Tuesday that the five Navy Avengers they found off Fort Lauderdale are not the Lost Squadron that disappeared in 1945, helping form the myth of the Bermuda Triangle.
The high-tech explorations ship Deep See discovered the five planes last month and found a plane number that corresponded to Flight 19, which vanished while on a routine training flight.But subsequent checks showed that other numbers did not check out, and that the planes were of an older type than the Lost Squadron.
"We are in the unenviable position of telling you that we're now quite certain that the five aircraft we found are not those of Flight 19, but in fact are five other aircraft," said Graham Hawkes, who headed the search.
The strongest evidence that the planes were Flight 19 had come from the fact that the five Avengers were found within 11/2 miles of each other, and the Navy had no records of five other Avengers being lost together.
Hawkes said after looking at the wrecks, they now believe the five planes went down in four or five separate incidents.