First Article as it appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on March 27, 2004

Second Article as it appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on May 16, 2004

\BY DAVID HAWLEY
Pioneer Press

Lex Cralley was in Washington, D.C., last week when the feds arrived at his rural home near Princeton, Minn., and spent hours inspecting the wreckage of a World War II Corsair fighter plane that has been resting in a machine shed behind his house since 1990.
Earlier in the day, Cralley's wife, Mary, had gathered up their four children and fled the premises. When the feds - two solemn lawyers, two aircraft appraisers and one aviation historian - arrived at the home in a fleet of nondescript rental sedans, they were met by Cralley's lawyer, Minneapolis attorney Boyd H. Ratchye.
"I had no intention of being there," Cralley said later. "For all I knew, they intended to interrogate me."
By the end of the week, however, it appeared that a five-year dispute over ownership of the plane is destined for a resolution that is favorable to Cralley - though it will require an act of Congress.
The events of last week were the latest chapters in a struggle that began when the U.S. Navy learned that Cralley, a 49-year-old mechanic employed by Northwest Airlines, had salvaged the remains of the plane that had crashed in a North Carolina swamp back in 1944. Shortly after the crash, a Navy report noted the death of the pilot, Marine Lt. Robin C. Pennington, and described the plane as "demolished."
Though more than four decades passed before Cralley salvaged the wreck, he learned the hard way that the Navy has a policy of exerting its ownership of things that have been long discarded - and that they can play hardball.
"In the past two years, things had gotten pretty ugly," Cralley said.
And then they got worse. In March, the U.S. Justice Department, acting as an agent of 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.
At the time the lawsuit was filed, officials at the Justice Department declined to discuss the reasons behind the Navy's interest in getting the plane back. But historical aviation enthusiasts said Cralley's salvaged plane is a rare one - perhaps the only existing Corsair of its kind.
Specifically, it's a "Brewster F3A-1" Corsair, manufactured by the Brewster Aeronautical Corp. of Long Island, N.Y., after the original manufacturer, the Chance Vought Aircraft Corp. of Stratford, Conn., became overwhelmed by a wartime demand for new planes.
Brewster, which no longer exists, built only 735 versions of the F3A-1 - Cralley's was the 119th - compared to more than 12,000 F4U Corsairs built by Chance Vought.
A story about the lawsuit that was published in March by the Pioneer Press was picked up by news services and sent around the world. Within days, Cralley said he was inundated with phone calls and messages, most of them from people who wanted to express support or outrage.
One came from U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., whose district includes the original crash site near the Cherry Point Marine Corps Training Station. Jones later wrote a scalding letter to Navy Secretary Gordon England in which he asked England to exert some "common-sense leadership" to avoid having the Corsair dispute become a "laughable poster child" for big government run amok.
Cralley also said he got support from Minnesota's former U.S. Sen. Rod Grams, a Republican who is now a Washington lobbyist, and from U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn.
On Monday, a spokeswoman for Jones' Washington office said the congressman would be introducing a "private bill" that will specifically convey the Corsair from the Navy to Cralley.
"The Navy has given their blessing on this particular option," said Anne Cassity, an aide to Jones. "Hopefully, it will be resolved in the near future."
Ratchye said a continuance on the federal lawsuit against Cralley is expected to stop it from going forward until July. By then, he hopes the action will be dropped.
"I don't have an argument with the Navy or anybody who served in it," Cralley said Wednesday, the day after he returned from Washington. "But with some bureaucrats \emdash yeah, I have an argument."
Cralley said his efforts to restore the Corsair have been largely "on hold" for the past five years because of the federal dispute. "I hope to move ahead now that ownership is resolved," he said.
He acknowledges that he has a long way to go. In addition to the damage suffered in the crash, a Navy salvage crew stripped the plane of equipment before it was abandoned. And over the years, parts of the plane also disappeared, Cralley said.
"I spent five years just trying to locate the parts and collect components that were scattered all over the place," Cralley said.
Unlike a preservation effort, restoring the plane means fabricating new parts, which is something Cralley says he can't do alone. For example, some of the gun access doors on the wings of the plane have been replicated by Art Aasland, a machinist from Lakeville.
"The quality of his work is amazing," Cralley said. "But it's a very slow, painstaking process."
Restoration of the plane by some estimates could cost in the millions. The plane itself could be worth more than $1 million if restored for flight. Only about 24 flyable Corsairs exist.
On a recent visit, he pointed to the main wing spar of the aircraft, the part that gave the plane its inverted "gull wing" design. The wings that extended from it were folded up when the plane was sitting on an aircraft carrier.
"If I can restore the central spar in the next two years, I'll be a happy person," Cralley said, adding that he has set no personal timetable for restoring the plane to flight.
"We have to preserve some of these planes statically, as artifacts," Cralley said. "But it's also important to see them fly, so that young generations have an appreciation of what they were."
David Hawley can be reached at dhawley@pioneerpress.com or 612-338-6516.

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