On the fifth day of a search that accompanied a great national wake, a red sonar blotch led searchers to the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his two passengers, trapped in the shattered fuselage of his plane on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

Mr. Kennedy's remains were located about 2:30 A.M. by an underwater camera checking objects detected by sonar. Several hours later, Navy divers in heavy-duty gear moved the crumpled wreckage and found the passengers from his flight through black haze last Friday night -- his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, 33, and his sister-in-law, Lauren G. Bessette, 34.

The bodies were raised about 4:30 P.M. The discovery marked the conclusion of a frantic search that had begun Saturday morning after Mr. Kennedy did not arrive at Martha's Vineyard, where he had planned to land before attending a family wedding. Rescuers fanned out by air, sea and land, over 9,000 square miles. The first certain clue to what had happened came Saturday afternoon, when a luggage tag bearing the name of Lauren Bessette washed ashore on Martha's Vineyard.

The three bodies were found at 116 feet, about seven miles southwest of Martha's Vineyard. At a news conference tonight at the investigation's command center in Bourne, Rear Adm. Richard M. Larrabee of the Coast Guard said that all three victims were ''near and under'' the fuselage, still strapped in.