A newly discovered piece of debris from flight MH370 suggests the pilot lowered the plane’s landing gear just before it plunged into the ocean, supporting the theory that the aircraft was crashed deliberately.

The Boeing 777 component, also known as a trunnion door, was found in the possession of a Madagascan fisherman 25 days ago – becoming the first physical evidence suggesting one of the pilots purposefully tried to destroy and sink the Malaysian Airlines jet with 239 passengers and crew on board.

Now, a fresh report published by British engineer Richard Godfrey and a self-described American MH370 wreckage hunter Blaine Gibson, suggests the washed up landing gear door was probably penetrated from the inside by the plane’s engines disintegrating on impact.

This makes it highly likely that the landing gear was down when the aircraft crashed into the southern Indian Ocean on 8 March 2014 – leaving behind one of the greatest aviation mysteries in recent history.

In their new analysis, Mr Godfrey and Mr Gibson suggest the airliner crashed quickly and deliberately.

“The fact that the damage was from the interior side to the exterior side… leads to the conclusion that the landing gear was highly extended on impact, which in turn supports the conclusion that there was an active pilot until the end of the flight,” the report reads.

It added: “The level of damage with fractures on all sides and the extreme force of the penetration right through the debris item leads to the conclusion that the end of the flight was in a high-speed dive designed to ensure the aircraft broke up into as many pieces as possible.

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“The crash of MH370 was anything but a soft landing on the ocean.”

The report claims the combination of the high-speed impact designed to break up the aircraft and the extended landing gear designed to sink the aircraft as quickly as possible both show a “clear intent to hide the evidence of the crash”.

Pilots do not usually lower the undercarriage if they have to perform an emergency landing on water, as the extended landing gear will dig into the water and disrupt contact with the surface, increasing the chances of a catastrophic break-up as the aircraft slows.

While four pieces of debris thought to belong to the missing airliner have been discovered on the same beach, the door is the first to offer real clues into the 2014 crash.

Nineteen pieces of wreckage have so far washed ashore in Madagascar and have been handed to the authorities.

The latest find, the damaged landing gear door, was discovered at the home of a fisherman, who discovered the washed-up part on the shore of the Antsiraka peninsula in March 2017 in the wake of tropical storm Fernando.

The fisherman guarded the debris for more than five years, oblivious of its existence. He kept it in his large yard and his wife used it as a washing board, and he admitted he had no idea what it was.