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.

IIRC, The Navy pulled the same crap with Quonset Air Museum after they recovered
a Hellcat in the waters off Cape Cod.


--Ray Andraka, P.E.
President, the Andraka Consulting Group, Inc.
401/884-7930 Fax 401/884-7950
email
http://www.andraka.com

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin, 1759

On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 15:07:54 GMT, "marc" wrote:

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 did the exact thing when a guy recovered a Corsair from Lake
Washington in the '80s. The US Government claims continued ownership of
its property, even when abandoned in place. The airplane did get restored
and is now sitting in Seattle's Museum of Flight. Don't recall how the
legal action went, but the Museum's web page describes the aircraft as
"...on loan from the National Museum of Naval Aviation at Pensacola,
Florida. "

http://www.museumofflight.org/collec...lay.html?ID=55

So it sounds like the guy who raised it from the lake didn't get ownership,
though I don't know if he had to pay damages or whether he was compensated
for his expenses.

The situation is probably analogous to finding a wrecked 172 in the
mountains. Somebody probably still holds the title, whether it's the
original owner, their estate, or the insurance company that paid the claim.

Ron Wanttaja

"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.

"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
news

The situation is probably analogous to finding a wrecked 172 in the
mountains. Somebody probably still holds the title, whether it's the
original owner, their estate, or the insurance company that paid the
claim.


Private vehicles that are abandoned are usually covered by salvage laws that
allow people to claim them after a certain period of time. The US government
exempts itself from these salvage laws, however.

If somebody did find a 172 in the mountains they might be able to claim it
under salvage laws. Many states tax salvage quite heavily.

There are specific procedures that must be followed to acquire a
military crash.
First you must write the agency a letter describing the wreck, with all
appropriate information, and ask if they are willing to abandon it for
salvage. You must obtain a letter from the owning agency stating that
they have abandoned the wreck.
Once you have that letter, you may proceed to retrieve the wreck.
This may not be the proper language, but is the gist of the process as
it was explained to me 25 years ago by someone who retrieved a P-51B (?)
off the slopes in Alaska and restored it. ("Moon" Spiller, Versailles Ohio)

There are specific procedures that must be followed to acquire a
military crash.
First you must write the agency a letter describing the wreck, with all
appropriate information, and ask if they are willing to abandon it for
salvage. You must obtain a letter from the owning agency stating that
they have abandoned the wreck.
Once you have that letter, you may proceed to retrieve the wreck.
This may not be the proper language, but is the gist of the process as
it was explained to me 25 years ago by someone who retrieved a P-51B (?)
off the slopes in Alaska and restored it. ("Moon" Spiller, Versailles Ohio)

That may have been true 25 years ago for ex Army or Air Force aircraft but some
time ago the USAF decided that any aircraft lost prior to 1962 is of no
interest to them and thus is open to salvage depending on where it lays and
whether or not it is a grave site. If it is on private property then it
becomes the property of the landowner. I recently heard of a P-51 Mustang that
was recovered with minimal damage by a landowner in 1945 and kept in his barn
until the past year or so.

The Navy however has determined that all of its equipment remains its property
forever as described by others posting here. Unfortunately the Navy cannot
seem to cooperate with people who want to help it recover historic aircraft.
Case in point, the Douglas TBD Devastator discovered over a decade ago off
Florida in relatively shallow water and amazingly intact. People who have the
coordinates of the wreck have been told that even if they recover it and
present it to the Museum of Naval Aviation they will still be sued for unlawful
recovery and the Navy will not give them permission to recover it. So a
tangible symbol of some of the greatest self sacrifice by Naval Aviation will
probably rust away to oblivion because the Navy cannot get out of its own way.

John Dupre'