I’ve questioned myself; I’ve looked for a way out of this. I wish to Christ I’d never seen the thing… but there it is. It was a jet’s wing,” he added.

The fisherman said the wing was bigger than a private plane.

Mr Olver said the note of his trawler’s engine deepened, and its exhaust temperature rose as he tried to bring the part of the plane to the surface.

George Currie, the only other surviving member of Mr Olver’s crew present on the day of the discovery, said they experienced great discovery in pull out the wing.

“It was incredibly heavy and awkward. It stretched out the net and ripped it. It was too big to get up on the deck,” Mr Currie, now 69, told Sydney Morning Herald.

“As soon as I saw it I knew what it was. It was obviously a wing, or a big part of it, from a commercial plane. It was white, and obviously not from a military jet or a little plane,” he added.

The crew members on the trawler were forced to cut the $20,000 net after they were unable to get the plane piece onto their vessel.

Listen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.com

Mr Over said he can still give authorities the coordinates of where he discovered the wing. He said the plane’s part came to rest at a relatively shallow depth on the floor of a sea floor.