Recent work of Gorenstein and Lyons on finite simple groups has led to standard form problems for odd primes. The present paper classifies certain simple groups which have a standard 3-component of type ¿5(2). Introduction. D. Gorenstein and R. Lyons [8] have recently shown that any "minimal unknown" simple group G of characteristic 2 type with e(G) > 4 must satisfy one of three specific conditions. In [3], we consider a special case of one of those conditions. Here, we obtain characterizations

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... of groups with e(G) = 3 which satisfy hypotheses analogous to those in that case. We are concerned with the following hypothesis. %": G is a group, b is an element of G of order 3, and J = Oy(E(C(b))). Furthermore, the following conditions hold. (a)J/Z(J)^Ln(2); (b) C(J) has cyclic Sylow 3-subgroups; (c) <è> is not strongly closed in C(b); and (d)mX3(G) = m3(C(b)). Briefly, %n says that G has a standard 3-component of type F"(2) satisfying the Gorenstein-Lyons conditions. In the general case, the statement of the Gorenstein-Lyons conditions is somewhat more technical. We also remark that by results of Schur [12] and Steinbere[13], either J = L"(2) or n = 3 or 4 and J is the unique central extension Ln(2) of F"(2) byZ2.