This should be interesting to watch. The military or government has never before objected to the civilian recovery of old, abandoned military A/C in the past without telling the salvage outfit upfront that it objected. Could this be the case with this?.. or, is there something to hide with the remains of the last of its kind..maybe the plane was not actually built according to specifications?
Navy Sues Civilian for Return of Plane
By Associated Press
March 27, 2004, 4:51 PM EST
MINNEAPOLIS -- The federal government has filed a lawsuit against an airplane collector demanding the return of the wreckage of a World War II Corsair fighter that the Navy abandoned after it crashed in a North Carolina swamp in 1944.
Historical airplane enthusiasts say the plane Lex Cralley dug out of the swamp near the North Carolina coast is the only one of its kind known to still exist.
Cralley, an airplane mechanic with a passion for preserving World War II aviation history, salvaged the pieces of the single-engine plane in 1990, registered it as a "non-airworthy model" with the Federal Aviation Administration and began the painstaking work of restoration, which remains far from completion.
This month the Justice Department sued Cralley on behalf of the Navy, seeking the plane, the cost of returning it and compensation for any damage since Cralley recovered it.
Cralley said Friday he will defend himself, but acknowledged that the suit has rattled him.
"I'm just a little guy," said Cralley, 49, of Princeton, north of Minneapolis. "I have no wealth, work for a living, have four kids."
The lawsuit doesn't say why the plane is so important to the Navy. "We're not going to provide anything more than what we'll be saying in court," said Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department's civil division in Washington.
Airplane buffs say Cralley's plane is the only known survivor of one particular model of Corsair, a "Brewster F3A-1," built by the Brewster Aeronautical Corp. of Long Island City, N.Y. Brewster turned out 735, compared to more than 12,000 F4U Corsairs built by the Chance Vought Aircraft Corp. of Stratford, Conn. Neither company exists today.
Dick Phillips, a retired Northwest Airlines executive from suburban Burnsville who writes about World War II aircraft, said he knows of only about two dozen Corsairs of any model still flying. "I don't know of any airworthy Corsair that sold in the last five years for less than $1 million," he said.
The Corsair, designed to land on aircraft carriers, is one of the most recognizable World War II fighters, with its long fuselage, huge radial piston engine with a large propeller and a unique inverted "gull wing" design
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