It's taken six years and a special act of Congress, but an aircraft mechanic from Princeton, Minn., is the undisputed owner of a rare World War II Corsair fighter plane that he salvaged 15 years ago from a North Carolina swamp.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis approved a settlement that ends a lawsuit filed a year ago by the U.S. Justice Department against Lex Cralley. The lawsuit was the climax of an escalating battle of wills that had been going on since 1999 between the 50-year-old Northwest Airlines mechanic and the U.S. Navy.
"I've been under a cloud so long, it almost seems like a dream that it's over," Cralley said Tuesday.
In celebration, Cralley said he plans to exhibit the still-skeletal and disjointed remains of the Corsair at the annual Experimental Aircraft Association show next August in Oshkosh, WI.
"It remains a piece of naval aviation history to be shared," said Cralley, whose dream is to restore the plane to flying condition something that will take many years and millions of dollars, according to aviation history experts. It's estimated that fewer than 25 Corsairs still are flying.
In 1990, Cralley salvaged the remains of the fighter plane that had been buried in the muck of a North Carolina swamp for 46 years after it crashed there during a training flight in 1944. Shortly after the crash, a Navy report noted the death of the pilot, Marine Lt. Robin C. Pennington, and described the plane as "demolished."
Cralley transported the pieces of the shattered plane to a workshop behind his home in rural Princeton, registered it as a "non-airworthy model" with the Federal Aviation Administration and began the painstaking work of restoration.
Nearly a decade later, however, the Navy came calling. Though the world is littered with the abandoned artifacts of war, the official policy of the Navy is that its property is its property forever.
And the Navy was particularly interested in the remnants of the plane in Cralley's shed. Military aviation enthusiasts say it's the only Corsair of its kind known to exist.
Specifically, it's a Corsair that was manufactured by the Brewster Aeronautical Corp. of Long Island, NY, after the original manufacturer, the Chance Vought Aircraft Corp. of Stratford, CT, became overwhelmed by the wartime demand for new planes.
Brewster, which no longer exists, built 735 Corsairs Cralley's was the 119th compared with more than 12,000 F4U Corsairs built by Vought, which is now headquartered in Dallas.
Cralley said he was inundated with phone calls and messages after word of the lawsuit became public last year. Most of them came from people who wanted to express anger or outrage, he said.
One came from U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-NC, whose district includes the original crash site near Cherry Point Marine Corps Training Station.
Jones, who called the dispute a "laughable poster child" for big government run amok, introduced a measure called a "private bill" in the House that specifically directed the Navy to convey ownership of the plane to Cralley. The Senate version was introduced by Minnesota's Norm Coleman.
"Here was a good solid American citizen who wants to preserve naval air history at his own expense and the Big Brother Navy comes down and says, 'No you can't,' " Jones said Tuesday. "To me, it was just ridiculous."
The measure was attached to the Ronald Reagan Defense Bill that was enacted last October. But it took another six months for attorneys representing the government and Cralley to agree to the terms of the gift.
"I'm not going to speak negatively about the donative's efforts, but the gift seemed to come awfully hard," said Boyd Ratchye, the Minneapolis attorney who represents Cralley.
In the end, Ratchye said Cralley got the deal he wanted, but he added that the agreement does not set a precedent for the resolution of disputes between the Navy and other private collectors of salvaged military hardware.
Deborah Sciascia, an attorney for the Naval Inventory Control Point in Philadelphia, referred calls to naval public affairs. In turn, they referred calls to the public affairs office of the Department of Justice, which could not be reached for comment.
However, in a letter that accompanied the settlement, the Navy's assistant director, Helen D. Rosen, stated that the agreement "is in the best interests of the United States."
