Navy guns for warplane

A rare WWII Corsair recovered by a Minnesotan from its 1944 crash site
is the object of a legal dispute.

BY DAVID HAWLEY

Pioneer Press


In 1990, Lex Cralley's passion for preserving World War II aviation
history led him to salvage the wreckage of a Corsair fighter plane
that the U.S. Navy abandoned after it crashed in a North Carolina
swamp in 1944.

Cralley transported the pieces to a storage facility near his home in
Princeton, Minn., then registered it as a "non-airworthy model" with
the Federal Aviation Administration and began the painstaking work of
restoration. The task is still long from complete.

But now, after 60 years, the Navy says it wants the plane back.

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department, acting as an agent for the
Navy, filed a lawsuit in Minneapolis seeking the plane, the cost of
returning it and compensation for "any damage to or alteration of" the
aircraft since Cralley dug it out of the swamp.

"As owner of this aircraft, I will vigorously defend my position,"
Cralley said Friday, though he added that the government's legal move
has him rattled.

"I'm just a little guy," said Cralley, 49, an aviation mechanic. "I
have no wealth, work for a living, have four kids."

The lawsuit doesn't state why the pieces of the plane are 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.

But historical airplane enthusiasts say they know the reason for the
government's interest: Though it looks almost exactly like all the
other Corsair warbirds from World War II, Cralley's plane is the only
model of a particular Corsair fighter known to exist.

Specifically, it's a "Brewster F3A-1" Corsair, manufactured by the
Brewster Aeronautical Corp. of Long Island, N.Y., after the original
manufacturer, the Chance Vought Aircraft Corp. of Stratford, Conn.,
became overwhelmed by a wartime demand for new planes. Neither company
exists today.

Brewster built 735 versions of the F3A-1, compared to more than 12,000
F4U Corsairs built by Chance Vought. Among aircraft historians, that's
an important distinction that could amount to millions of dollars in
value if the plane is ever restored to flying condition.

"I don't know of any airworthy Corsair that sold in the last five
years for less than $1 million," said Dick Phillips, a retired
Northwest Airlines executive from Burnsville who writes books about
World War II aircraft. He said only about two dozen Corsairs are still
flying.

The lawsuit claims Cralley put a value of $5.5 million on the Corsair
when officials first demanded its return. Cralley declined to comment
about specific claims in the lawsuit.

"Potentially, it could be worth a lot of money," said Bob Odegaard,
who runs an aviation business in Kindred, N.D., and owns two airworthy
Corsairs, including a rare "Super Corsair" appraised for more than $5
million.

Originally designed to land on aircraft carriers, the single-engine
Corsair is still one of the most recognizable fighter planes from
World War II. Its distinctive characteristics were a long fuselage, a
huge radial engine with a giant propeller and a unique inverted "gull
wing" design that made it possible to land low without dragging the
prop on the deck.

The plane was nicknamed "whistling death" because of the sound it made
while diving. Others called it the "super Stuka," a reference to the
German dive-bomber. Phillips said the plane was judged tricky to land
on an aircraft carrier because its nose-up landing stance hampered
pilot visibility. For that reason, some detractors dubbed it the
"bent-wing ensign eliminator."

The plane was used effectively by U.S. Marine aviators in the Pacific,
including the famous "Black Sheep" squadron headed by top ace Gregory
"Pappy" Boyington that shot down 94 Japanese planes between August
1943 and January 1944.

Ironically, Phillips says so few "Brewster Corsairs" exist because
they were judged to be inferior.

"I have interviewed some of the pilots who said they didn't like
them," he said. "They said it's the same airplane (as the F4U), but
just doesn't fly the same."

Few Brewster Corsairs ever saw action, Phillips says.

"They kept them mostly in the U.S. and used them primarily for
training purposes," he said.

In fact, the plane that crashed in North Carolina on Dec. 19, 1944,
was on a training flight from the Cherry Point Marine Corps Training
Station. The pilot died and Navy personnel stripped the downed
aircraft of its weapons and other equipment before leaving it,
according to people familiar with the history of the plane.

"There's some wonderful stories connected with it," said Tom Lymburn,
a high school English teacher from Princeton who is also an aviation
enthusiast acquainted with the saga of the antique warbird. Cralley
declined to talk about the history behind the aircraft.

"Hopefully, when all this is resolved, those stories can be told,"
Lymburn said.

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