Navy sues man for plane he recovered in swamp

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).

-Marc

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Navy sues man for plane he recovered in swamp
By Associated Press, 3/28/2004

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.

The Justice Department sued Cralley this month 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 does not 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.