A historian and frequent visitor to Bermuda is back on the island gambling that a lost piece of aviation history remains in a local home.

Eric Wiberg, a historian and nautical author who wrote U-boats off Bermudain 2017, believes that relics of the aircraft Pilot Radio, which made the first flight from the United States to Bermuda in April 1930, could be somewhere on the island.

According to aviation lore, its pilots donated the aircraft’s gyrocompass and possibly a propeller to a Bermudian museum after the historic crossing. Both items have since been assumed lost.

Mr Wiberg, a Bahamas resident who writes about historic wrecks for The Nassau Tribune, said the wreckage of the Pilot Radio ultimately ended up in the Bahamas after the small plane crashed that same year.

His goal, if he is able to track down relics from the historic aircraft, is to reunite them with the Pilot Radio’s engine.

“I think it’s been taken and has become a trophy in someone’s home,” Mr Wiberg said. “The compass is small, but the propeller would be easy to find, because it’s huge.”

He said he was putting out “an appeal to ordinary folks to have a look in their basements and see if something like it is there”.

Mr Wiberg, who said he enjoyed “a good puzzle”, spotted a reference to the compass and possibly the propeller going to the Bermuda Historical Society in the 2014 history of aviation on the island, Wings Over Bermuda, published by the National Museum of Bermuda Press.

However, no records of any such relics remain, according to Andrew Bermingham, the president of the society.

Mr Bermingham said: “The items were allegedly handed to the Bermuda Historical Society in 1930. That’s 94 years ago. A lot could have happened.”

He said the historical society had last carried out a full review of its inventory in 1992.

“There is no record of any aircraft parts being donated to the museum,” he said.

“We’ve done a very diligent search of where we think these things might have ended up. It’s fair to say we’ve done all we can to point him in the right direction.”

Mr Bermingham noted the island’s rich aviation history. There was once a flight school on Hinson Island and aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, who vanished in 1937 while attempting to become the first female pilot to circle the world, visited the island.

“We wish Mr Wiberg well in his search — but the best that we can do is say that we do not have said items.”

Mr Bermingham said the artefacts could have ended up at the Royal Air Force Association, which closed about 40 years ago, or with the Bermuda War Veterans Association, which kept a museum on Dundonald Street in Hamilton.

Pilot Radio’s trip to the island from New York was undertaken by American pilots Captain Lewis Alonzo Yancey, William H. Alexander and Zeh Bouck, who flew here in the customised Stinson SM-1FS “Detroiter” aircraft that earned its name from radio station sponsors.

The trip was a risky one as the single-engine plane, mounted on floats to land on water, came with limited fuel and rudimentary radio equipment.

The trio relied on maps and the compass to find Bermuda.

Towards nightfall, they had to land in the open sea near Bermuda with their plane running low on fuel.

The Pilot Radiotook off from the ocean the following morning, making a second sea landing not far off the North Shore before touching down in Hamilton Harbour on April 2, 1930, after more fuel was sent out to them from the island.

The flight was declared a success but rough landings had damaged the aircraft. The Pilot Radio was dismantled to be shipped back home, with the grateful aviators donating its compass — and, possibly, a propeller as well — for posterity in Bermuda.

Mr Wiberg said thePilot Radioended up crashed in remote marshland in Exuma in the Bahamas in September of 1930.

The three men survived but the plane went down after a voyage to South America and through the Caribbean. It caught fire in the crash and its remains, including the engine, still have to be pinpointed.

Mr Wiberg added: “My goal, modest indeed, is to find the propeller or gyrocompass in Bermuda, then find the plane engine in Bahamas, and possibly somehow reunite the two.”

Mr Wiberg, who heads home tomorrow, has met officials at the National Museum of Bermuda as well as the Bermuda Historical Society, and searched records at the Bermuda National Library, hoping to track down where the aircraft relics might have gone.

He said he wanted to go public in the hope that the artefacts turned up in private hands, “in a basement or a trophy on a wall somewhere”.

• To get in touch with Mr Wiberg, e-mail ericwiberg@outlook.com