State trooper Zack Johnson was patrolling the shoreline in the US city of Jacksonville, Florida, when he made the discovery.
He found that Hurricane Irma had dredged up a tangled pile of military gear, including parachute rigging, a harness and survival supplies.
Then he noticed something stencilled on the kit – the name of a pilot who’d disappeared without a trace nearly 60 years earlier flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
Lieutenant William Thomas Barry Troy, of the Royal Canadian Navy, was flying an F2H3-Banshee fighter jet in dense fog on February 25, 1958.
He was en-route from an aircraft carrier to a naval station in Mayport, Florida, but dropped out of the four-plane formation and vanished.
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Neither his plane nor his body was ever recovered and the Canadian Virtual War Memorial listed the 29-year-old as “buried at sea”.
Now his family will finally have closure – and the comfort of knowing that their long-lost relative didn’t suffer for long.
“We happened to find this ball of stuff on the high water line. I know I drove past it at least five times,” Trooper Johnson told local media.
“I knew I had found something special when I found the lieutenant’s stencil on the back of the float coat. It looks like the parachute was never deployed.
“I believe it sat with the wreckage for a while before being washed loose. The speculation is that it was probably deposited in the dunes during Hurricane Dora.
“It’s sat there since then, until being uncovered by the erosion of the last storm.”
The pilot’s brother, 80-year-old Dick Troy, confessed his relief that the death would have been quick.
Speaking to CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, he said: “The fact that the chute was never deployed means it was very quick.
“It was traumatic for us and we really had no closure. My mum and dad grieved for many years… they went to the grave without getting anything.”
The debris is now held by Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, but the pilot’s brother hopes to recover it for the family.