Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Buckling 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, a ground services mechanic for an airline, dug up the abandoned Corsair fighter plane in Craven County, N.C., in 1991 and took it home to Minnesota. The airplane had crashed Dec. 19, 1944. With its unique gull-wing design, the Corsair was one of the most recognizable airplanes of World War II. U.S. pilots flew the propeller-powered plane in such storied campaigns as...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - 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"...