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From the local paper today.
Dan
Last update: May 21, 2004 at 6:49 AM
Navy drops lawsuit over Princeton, Minn., plane
Eric Rosenberg, Hearst Newspapers
May 21, 2004PLANE0521
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Yielding to congressional pressure, the Navy has reversed course and agreed to give the rusting hulk of a demolished World War II-era aircraft to a Princeton, Minn., aviation buff who is restoring the plane.
Lex Cralley, an airline ground services mechanic, dug up the abandoned Corsair fighter plane in Craven County, N.C., in 1991 and took it home to Minnesota. The airplane had crashed during a training run on Dec. 19, 1944.
With its unique gull-wing design, the Corsair was one of the most recognizable airplanes of World War II.
Legal problems for Cralley began in March, when the Justice Department sued him in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, claiming that the Navy wanted the airplane back and accusing him of stealing it.
When he learned of the lawsuit, Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., stepped in to help Cralley. He asked the Navy to drop the claim and give the aircraft to Cralley.
Jones said last week that Alberto Mora, the Navy's top lawyer, has agreed to do so.
Cralley, 49, said he was relieved by the Navy's agreement to transfer title to the Corsair.
"It was a whole lot more work to retain the plane than to obtain it," he said from his home, expressing thanks to Jones for helping resolve the dispute.
On May 10, government attorneys and an appraiser of vintage aircraft traveled to Cralley's workshop in Princeton and spent four hours surveying the plane, according to Boyd Ratchye, Cralley's lawyer. The government lawyers also showed him the draft language of a congressional amendment that would cede title of the Corsair to Cralley, thereby ending the lawsuit.
The House and Senate are expected to pass the measure this summer.
A little more than seven months after the Allies landed at Normandy on D-Day, Marine Corps 2nd Lt. Robin C. Pennington was flying the Corsair on a routine training mission from the Marine base at Cherry Point, N.C., when he bailed out "for some unknown reason," according to the Navy crash investigation. Pennington failed to pull the ripcord on his parachute. His body was found about a month later some distance from the crash site. The investigation report listed the plane as "demolished."
Despite that and the passage of decades with no apparent Navy interest in retrieving the aircraft, the service maintained in its lawsuit that it still owned the airplane.
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