Photo by Buck Wyndham, Copyright 2001 Warbird Alley
1940s CORSAIR RESEMBLES THE RARER F3A-1
Corsair, built by Brewster Aeronautical and wanted by the Navy
A rare WWII Corsair recovered by a Minnesotan
from its 1944 crash site is the object of a legal dispute
NAVY guns for warplane
BY DAVID HAWLEY
Pioneer Press
In 1990, Lex Cralley's passion for preserving World War II aviation
history led him to salvage the wreckage of a Corsair
fighter plane that the U.S. Navy abandoned after it crashed in a
North Carolina swamp in 1944.
Cralley transported the pieces to a storage facility near his home in
Princeton, Minnesota, then registered it as a "non-airworthy model" with
the Federal Aviation Administration and began the painstaking work of
restoration. The task is still long from complete.
But now, after 60 years, the Navy says it wants the plane back.
Last week, the U.S. Justice Department, acting as an agent for the
Navy, filed a lawsuit in Minneapolis seeking the plane, the cost of
returning it and compensation for "any damage to or alteration
of" the aircraft since Cralley dug it out of the swamp.
"As owner of this aircraft, I will vigorously defend my position,"
Cralley said Friday, through though he added that the government's legal
move has him rattled.
"I'm just a little buy," said Cralley, 49, an aviation
mechanic. "I have no wealth, work for a living, have four kids."
The lawsuit doesn't state why the pieces of the plane are 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.
But historical airplane enthusiasts say they know the reason for the
government's interest: Though it looks almost exactly like all the other
Corsair warbirds from World War II, Cralley's plane is the only model of a
particular Corsair fighter known to exist.
Specifically, it's a "Brewster F3A-1" Corsair,
manufactured by the Brewster aeronautical Corp. of Long Island, New York
after the original manufacturer, the Chance Vought Aircraft Corporation of
Stratford became overwhelmed by a wartime demand for new planes. Neither
company exists today.
Brewster built 735 versions of the F3A-1 compared to more than 12,000
F4U Corsairs built by Chance Vought. Among aircraft
historians, that's an important distinction that could amount to millions
of dollars in value if the plane is ever restored to flying condition.
"I don't know of any airworthy Corsair that sold in the last five years
for less than $1 million," said Dick Phillips, a retired
Northwest Airlines executive from Burnsville who writes books about World
War II aircraft. He said only about two dozen Corsairs are still flying.
The lawsuit claims Cralley put a value of $3.5 million on the Corsair
when officials first demanded its return. Cralley declined to comment
about specific claims in the lawsuit.
"Potentially, it could be worth a lot of money," said Bob Odegaard,
who runs an aviation business in Kindred, ND and owns two airworthy
Corsairs, including a rare "Super Corsair" appraised for [the remaining
portion of this paragraph was missing from the copy used to compile this
report.]
Originally designed to land on aircraft carriers, the single-engine
Corsair is still one of the most recognizable fighter planes from World
War II. It's distinctive characteristics were a long
fuselage, a huge radial engine with a giant propeller and a unique
inverted "gull Wing" design that made it possible to land low without
dragging the prop on the deck.
The plane was nicknamed "whistling death" because of the sound it made
while diving. Other's called it the "super Stuka," a reference to the
German dive-bomber. Phillips said the plane was judged tricky to land on
an aircraft carrier because its nose-up landing stance hampered pilot
visibility. For that reason For that reason, some detractors dubbed it the
"bent-wing ensign eliminator,"
The plane was used effectively by the U.S. Marine aviators in the
Pacific, including the famous "Black Sheep" squadron headed
by top ace Gregory "Pappy" Boyington that shot down 94 Japanese planes
between August 1943 and January 1944.
Ironically, Phillips says so few "Brewster Corsairs" exist because they
were judged to be inferior.
"I have interviewed some of the pilots who said they didn't like them,"
he said. "They said, it's the same airplane (as the F4U), but just doesn't
fly the same."
Few Brewster Corsairs ever saw action, Phillips said.
"They kept them mostly in the U.S. and used them primarily for training
purposes," he said.
In fact, the plane that crashed in North Carolina on December 19, 1944
was on a training flight from Cherry Point Marine Corps Training Station.
The pilot died and Navy personnel stripped the downed aircraft of its
weapons and other equipment before leaving it, according to people
familiar with the history of the plane.
"There's some wonderful stories connected with it," said Tom Lymburn, a
high school English teacher who is also an aviation enthusiast acquainted
with the saga of the antique warbird. Cralley declined to talk about the
history behind the aircraft.
"Hopefully, when all this is resolved, those stories can be told,"
Lymburn said.
David Hawley can be reached at
dhawley@pioneerpress.com or
612.338.6516.
