A daring search by a team of Dorset adventurers for the wreckage of a US aircraft - and for answers to the fate of the plane and its pilot - has started promisingly, with several potential targets located.

The lost Hercules C-130 was taken in May 1969 from a USAF base at Mildenhall in Suffolk by engineer Sergeant Paul A. Meyer, who was apparently intending to fly it home to his family in the US. The transporter disappeared from radar over the channel, about 40 miles off Portland Bill; a USAF investigation found that the plane simply ran out of fuel, but rumour, suspicion and allegations of an official cover-up have continued to swirl around the story. Neither the plane's wreckage nor the body of Sgt. Meyer have ever been found.

In an attempt to ascertain what really happened, Deeper Dorset, a team of divers and explorers, has begun scouring the waters of the channel around where the transporter is believed to have gone down.

"It's been an encouraging start," Deeper Dorset's Grahame Knott told the Echo.

"We have been working as much as we can - it is quite a meticulous search," he said, adding that post-processing and data analysis took up just as much time as the search itself.

In four excursions since the end of April, the team has covered a total of around eight square miles of seabed in forensic detail, and has located some six or seven targets for closer inspection.

Grahame was however quick to stress that these targets were far from certain to be anything to do with the lost Hercules.

"These things could turn out to be almost anything," he explained. ""We know we're not going to find a whole aircraft with wings and all attached - we're looking for parts.

"We have learnt over the years not to get too excited when we find these things," he went on. "We didn't expect to find it on the first day.

"As we always say at Deeper Dorset - if it was easy, someone would already have done it."

The team will continue its search every fortnight over the course of the summer, covering an eventual total of some 30 sqm. But there is no shortage of technical issues to consider: Grahame explained that the crew's sonar towfish equipment alone was worth some £12,000, and vulnerable to being lost or damaged if the 250 feet of cable towing it became tangled amid the channel's busy shipping traffic and number fishing vessels.

"Losing it would be a big setback," Grahame noted. "This is a high-risk operation - the onus is on us to keep out of the way."

Deeper Dorset's search has attracted publicity both at home and in the US, beginning with a Kickstarter fundraising campaign earlier this year. Grahame remarked that while the campaign had been useful in providing £6,000 to cover the expedition's fuel costs, it had also provided a great fillip of publicity.

"Lots of people have been in touch," he said. "And we've heard all the same old conspiracies - there's a lot of hearsay and Chinese whispers. But that's why we're doing this - to find out the facts and dispel the rumours.

"People say - why are you doing this, we'll never know the truth. But leaving the wreck at the bottom of the ocean won't answer any questions either."