Preloading multiple swf into one movie

I desperately need help preloading multiple external swf files.

My goal;

Please refer to the attached image, which is loaded into _level1 of my movie. I have a preloader for this which works fine. This image will be accompanied by additional data which the user can browse etc. While doing this I need 18 swf files representing the 18 different holes to preload so that when they choose one it loads without delay. These therefor need to be loading in the background, once loaded wait to be called apon, and then displayed.

What would really be great is to show the progress of each one via a progress bar on each hole and when done say something like, “Ready for viewing”.

The reason for preloading these files is that they are fairly large, around 1.5 MB each and I don’t want the user to have to wait.

Any help regarding this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Damian.