A piece of Bermuda's aviation history could have been forever lost last week when the "Flying Cloud", a airplane-artefact with ties to the Island crashed in shallow waters near Seattle.

No one was hurt when the four-member crew aboard the plane elected to ditch the Boeing Stratoliner "Flying Cloud" in Elliott Bay just west of Seattle, Boeing's hometown after experiencing landing gear problems, according to the report on the crash which ran on CNN.com.

The plane is believed to be the last remaining Boeing Stratoliner, numbered S-307, and had been under renovation for six years in preparation for a move to the museum wing of Washington's Dulles airport in 2003.

It is owned by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

On Friday rescue crews pulled the craft - which is still in one piece - from the waters of the bay and Smithsonian officials hope it can one day be restored to flying condition.

The small passenger aircraft was a harbinger of today's modern commercial airliners and at one time made daily runs between New York and Bermuda.

The Stratoliner was the first commercial airliner designed to fly as high as 20,000 feet and carried a crew of five and 33 passengers.

It was later reconfigured to seat 45 passengers flying at an average speed of 187 mph.

The plane was built in 1940 and first flew routes in Texas, California and Mexico for Pan American airlines, the report stated. Only ten planes of the model were ever built.

During World War II, the Flying Cloud was put to work with the US Army Air Forces in South America but when the war ended the plane returned to commercial use and assumed its Bermuda route.

As modern aircraft developed to replace it in commercial use, Smithsonian officials say the plane changed hands several times and even once belonged to the infamous Haitian dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier.

The crew were heading for Boeing Field after a test flight when the pilot told aviation officials he was experiencing problems.

The plane splashed into the water just two miles from its destination and three US Coast Guard vessels were at the scene minutes later to attend to the crew, the report said.

"Historians believed all Stratoliners had been lost until a National Air and Space Museum curator noticed the `Flying Cloud' in a Tucson, Arizona, museum," the Smithsonian told CNN. "The Smithsonian then bought the plane and began renovations."