Federal officials are now investigating why a small plane crashed into the Hudson River Friday night, killing the pilot. NY1's Natalie Duddridge has more.

The wreckage of a World War II-era plane was pulled from the Hudson River Saturday, the day after it crashed near the George Washington Bridge Friday night.

The crash killed the Pilot, 56-year-old William Gordon who was the only person inside the vintage aircraft. 

Gordon was originally from Copake, New York but was living in Key West, Florida.

"He was a great guy who flew here at the Aerodrome for many years," said Clay Hammond, Vice President of the Board of Trustees and Chief Pilot at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. "He was a trusted friend and a trusted pilot. Everyone liked flying with him."

Emergency crews arrived shortly after the plane hit the water, but it took nearly three hours for NYPD divers to recover Gordon's body from the river.

Then, officials worked overnight to coordinate the recovery of the plane.

"We needed to bring in a ship from Sandy Hook from the Army Corps of Engineers with the proper equipment to lift it out," said Nancy Silvestri  a spokeswoman for the city's Office of Emergency Management. "Now it's heading down south Manhattan to a location where it will be docked."

Now, The Federal Aviation Administration will be given access to the plane so they can begin their investigation and find out what caused it to go down.

FAA says the plane was a P-47 Thunderbolt owned by the American Airpower Museum on Long Island.

It had taken off from the nearby Republic Airport, along with two other planes that returned to the airport safely.

In a statement, officials from the Airpower Museum said: "The FAA will determine the reason for the inflight failure but we know this much. Bill was a nationally respected pilot and we were lucky to call him one of our own."

Gordon had been an airshow performer for more than 25 years. He was scheduled to fly at the 75th anniversary celebration of the P-47 this weekend.

But now, collision analysts say it could take days to uncover the clues as to what went wrong.