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WASHINGTON - Navy divers who retrieved the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law yesterday were confronted with a hellish scene, but worked with the sensitivities of the families in mind.

The bodies of the three victims were pinned by twisted metal and wiring in the fuselage of Kennedy's Piper Saratoga and were painstakingly eased out by the divers, said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Richard Larrabee.

It was "the kind of thing you can imagine that would be the result of a high impact contact with the water," he said. "They were brought up in a way, I think, that respected the situation we were in," said Larrabee.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and his sons, Edward Jr. and Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), were aboard the salvage ship Grasp for the recovery operation off Martha's Vineyard and accompanied the bodies back to Woods Hole, Mass., aboard a Coast Guard cutter.