Navy Drops Suit

Mark,

Yes its a small but important victory. Its to bad Lex can’t get the tail section from the guy who has it and also the outer wing thats with another collector.

Well…having seen some pics of the plane as supplied by a friend, I can tell you that ‘demolished’ is a relative term..it is restorable, and hopefully Lex will be able to do so. Great news for him and the Corsair fanatics amongst us. Let’s hope he can procede with a restoration and we’ll have another example in our midst.

Mark

Newspaper Article

Here is the full story…
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

Hey Guys,

Go over to warbird resource group click on the Nav-Ops board and you will be able to read all about Mr.Crally and the Navy.

There is a post here (somewhere!) about the wreck of a Brewster-built Corsair he hauled out of a swamp(?) and is in the process of rebuilding, and how the US navy decided that they wanted/owned it and tried to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse/drag him into court for stealing it…Or something.;) – Nermal

That’s okay, I’m not embarrassed to say I’ve never heard of him either! A little explanation might have helped as we can’t be expected to know everyone!
By the way, who is this guy called Bush?

😮 Whispers embarrassedly [probably spelt wrong] what was the lawsuit and who is Lex Crally?
Was it something to do with raising wrecks from the sea and ownership etc.Sorry for not knowing 😮

Flood,

I quess that the Million Dollar Question. I’ve sent an e-mail to Rep. Jones R-NC to thank him for his help and to see if he is going to look into introducing a Bill to force the Navy to change its Policy.

I got an e-mail from Rep. “Duke” Cunninghams office staing he was looking into the Navy policys also.

So lets hope this is the beginning of something good.

Will this have a bearing on all the other cases previously mentioned?

Flood.™

Glad to hear it.