"marc" wrote in message
news:eTB9c.24329$w54.153737@attbi_s01...
Strange story. Why would the Navy care about a plane that crashed and was
destroyed 60 years ago? If they really want it they should *reward* the
guy
who dragged it out of a swamp for them and started restoring it, not sue
him! Unless there is more to the story not mentioned here (e.g. they tried
to buy it and the collector refused etc).

The Navy is specifically exempted from salvage laws in the United States.
That is, their equipment is never 'abandoned.' Under Federal laws that
Corsair still belongs to the Navy, no matter what Cralley has done with it.
The Navy's position is that they have to defend their interests in every
single case like this, or they will get looters at every crash site.

The Navy is kind of in a bind. They have no budget for recovering and
restoring historical aircraft, no matter how much they would like to do it.
At the same time, they don't want just anybody deciding he can raid crash
sites and doing whatever he wants with the Navy's property. The Navy is also
restricted from selling aircraft to civilians (they can sell all they want
to third world thugs who wish to use those aircraft against our civilians,
though -- go figure). They would like to see the Corsair restored, can't do
it themselves, and are greatly restricted in letting somebody else do it. A
lot of it is the consequence of legislation pushed through by the anti-gun
and anti-military crowd as well as criticism by Congressional budget hawks.

Cralley has no hope of keeping his Corsair, especially since he has no
lawyer to guide him through the complex process of working out a deal with
the Navy. There have been a few cases where the Navy has traded other
airplanes to individuals in return for restoration work they did on rare
aircraft that they recovered. However, these agreements are always worked
out in advance of the restoration or recovery of the aircraft.

This problem comes up quite frequently, actually. You would think that
would-be salvagers would have figured it out by now.