International publicity and fervent interest has seen a Dorset exploration society meets its fundraising target, allowing it to go ahead with an audacious project to locate the wreckage of a US Air Force plane - and, it hopes, shed some light on a mystery that has endured half a century.

Deeper Dorset launched in March its online fundraising campaign, with a target total of £6000 to contribute to the costs of its planned search for the wreckage of the USAF Hercules C-130 transporter plane, which Sergeant Paul Meyer took without permission from his USAF base in Mildenhall, Suffolk, in May 1969.

Sergeant Meyer was apparently intending to fly the aircraft home to his family in the USA. The Hercules disappeared from radar about 40 miles off Portland Bill, but its fate remains unclear; neither its wreckage nor Sgt. Meyer's body were ever located, and he is presumed dead.

Now Deeper Dorset is planning to find the wreckage, and in doing so, answer questions that have lingered for half a century over the fate of the plane and its pilot. While an official USAF investigation found that the aircraft had run out of fuel and crashed into the English Channel, Deeper Dorset founder and diver Grahame Knott has voiced his suspicions that the plane was shot down to minimise embarrassment to the US government.

The Deeper Dorset team will use cutting-edge 3D photogrammetry technology to locate the aircraft's wreckage off the Dorset coast, and in doing so, the team hopes, uncover the mystery that continues to surround the events of that May night.

When the Kickstarter fundraising campaign was launched in March, a wave of publicity was unleashed - including in the Echo, the Times, the BBC and even US outlets such as Fox News.

"I am fairly confident that we will find the wreckage," said Deeper Dorset's Grahame, adding that the exploration team would start scouring the channel 'within the next few weeks'.

The explorer revealed that further theories had come to light since he began the campaign, thanks to the publicity generated; he refused, however, to be drawn on the details.