Divers say they have found WRECKAGE of plane stolen by HOMESICK mechanic 50 years ago

US Sergeant Paul Meyer was chief mechanic with the USAF which was based at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk in 1969. The 23-year-old newly wed began to miss his wife and requested an early leave, but was declined. After refused leave to return home and a night of excessive drinking, according to reports, Mr Meyer stole the four-engined military cargo plane Hercules C-130.

He posed as a captain and ordered the plane to be refuelled and set on course for Langley, Virginia. He the set off on May 23.

Mr Meyer had his private pilot license, but was not qualified to handle a large aircraft and fly it thousands of miles across the Atlantic.

Eyewitnesses said they saw one of the wings tip almost touch the runaway upon take-off but Mr Meyer recovered the plane and flew in a south-westerly direction.

Over the English Channel contact with the aircraft was lost and Mr Meyer was never heard from again.

During the flight Mr Meyer attempted to send a radio to his wife and said: “Leave me alone for five minutes, I’ve got trouble.”

There has been much speculation about his disappearance, whether whether he lost control of the plane and crashed or whether the plane was shot down.

A group of divers from Deeper Dorset think they have found the wreckage, but will not reveal the location.

A spokesman said: “We have a David and Goliath situation and we will stop at nothing to figure this sad story out. We now have a real task ahead of us, but as usual we will come at it straight and level, whatever it takes.”

“We will treat the aircraft remains as if it were a crime scene – the first job being to map out an image, not just the main site but the various pieces we can see on the sonar around the site.”

The spokesman said the work to determine whether it is the right aircraft will be “painstaking” as they need to reverse engineer the sequence of events.

He said they require people with specialist knowledge but are working on that.

He added: “Having located the aircraft, we can already dispel a lot of stupid rumours and conspiracy theories, which is certainly half the battle won.

When Mr Meyer commandeered the aircraft in the UK, he was due to return to Virginia in a month.

His stepson Henry, who was seven at the time of the crash, said he remembered Mr Meyer as a “genuinely good young man”.

Henry said Mr Meyer had been keen to return home to help his mother in a custody battle.

He said: ”Paul was a patriot and loved his country – it seems he just loved his family more.”

Other eyewitnesses in the official report of the incident said they saw the plane fall from the sky and explode when it hit the water.

In the report it was concluded Mr Meyer was dead but there was no explanation for the crash.

Days after the crash, wreckage washed up in Alderney with what looked to be a liferaft. In July of the same year a corpse with what looked to be a flight suit was seen floating near Jersey, but drifted away.

Grahame Knott from Deeper Dorset said on social media that there was some speculation and doubt from aviation enthusiasts that the plane had really been found.

Mr Knott said they were positive they found the right aircraft but were not releasing images yet.