Totally awesome that the guy won. Too bad he had to fight the Navy to keep the plane, though. It's gonna look saaaweeeeet once it's restored.
Posted on 05/11/2005 8:04:35 AM PDT by Rakkasan1
It's taken six years and a special act of Congress, but an aircraft mechanic from Princeton, Minn., is the undisputed owner of a rare World War II Corsair fighter plane that he salvaged 15 years ago from a North Carolina swamp.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis approved a settlement that ends a lawsuit filed a year ago by the U.S. Justice Department against Lex Cralley. The lawsuit was the climax of an escalating battle of wills that had been going on since 1999 between the 50-year-old Northwest Airlines mechanic and the U.S. Navy.
"I've been under a cloud so long, it almost seems like a dream that it's over," Cralley said Tuesday.
In celebration, Cralley said he plans to exhibit the still-skeletal and disjointed remains of the Corsair at the annual Experimental Aircraft Association show next August in Oshkosh, Wis.
"It remains a piece of naval aviation history to be shared," said Cralley, whose dream is to restore the plane to flying condition — something that will take many years and millions of dollars, according to aviation history experts. It's estimated that fewer than 25 Corsairs still are flying.
In 1990, Cralley salvaged the remains of the fighter plane that had been buried in the muck of a North Carolina swamp for 46 years after it crashed there during a training flight 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."
Cralley transported the pieces of the shattered plane to a workshop behind his home in rural Princeton, registered it as a "non-airworthy model" with the Federal Aviation Administration and began the painstaking work of restoration.
Nearly a decade later, however, the Navy came calling.
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No. The Corsair was far faster and had a much greater rate of dive and climb. It was the first fighter in the Pacific to exceed 400mph in level flight, and the first to make use of water injection for power boosts. It could literally leave a Zero in a cloud (the Zero experianced very heavy aerolon resistance above 300mph, limiting its top speed and its ability to perform high speed manuevers).
Because of its speed and exceptional dive and acceleration performance, Corsair pilots always had the luxury of meeting the Zeros on terms most favorable to the Corsair.
The Japs hated the Corsair - the Japanese navy nickname for the plane was "whistling death"
The Corsair is alo the only WWII fighter to ever be the subject of a lyrical poem - "Ode to an F4U"
Only at relatively low speed. The Corsair had much better high speed manueverability. It was also more durable and could take a higher stress loading on the wings and airframe.
It's not really surprising that the Marines were still using Corsairs for ground support in Korea. My dad (acting seargent, machine gun squad leader, 5th Marine, 1951-1952)absolutely loved the plane and told me many times when I was young how popular the Corsair was among the Marines...
The Zero was a desperately overrated aircraft. The idea that it was some sort of superweapon has somehow made it into a lot of crappy History Channel documentaries.
The only occassions the Zero racked up high kill totals were against very badly trained Dutch, British, and Chinese pilots, flying things like Brewster Buffalos. The Japanese pilots at the beginning of the war were very, very, very, very, very good.
At no time in the entire war did Zeros have a positive kill ratio against US Navy pilots; even when they were flying F4F Wildcats; the F4F Wildcat killed more Zeros than Zeros killed Wildcats.
How tightly an aircraft can turn basically turned out to be irrelevant in World War II; Durability, Speed, ability to roll at high speeds, firepower were all more important.
Thing about the Zero was that there had been so much mythology about Japanese being nearsighted and unable to fly well, and unable to build decent machinery, that it was incredibly shocking when they turned out to have anything that was even remotely competitive.
http://www.aviation-central.com/1940-1945/aen60.htm
In production longer than any other U.S. fighter in World War II (1942-1952) with 12,582 built, the Vought F4U "Corsair" had several claims to fame. It was credited with an 11:1 ratio of kills to losses in action against Japanese aircraft and was the last piston-engine fighter in production for any of the U.S. services.
All in all, the "Hellcat" was credited with destroying 5,156 enemy aircraft in air-to-air combat (75% of all Navy aerial kills) with a kill ratio of 19:1. Combat stories of F6F encounters with enemy aircraft during World War II are legendary.
There's a great show about Boyington running on the Military Channel right now. I saw it yesterday or the day before.
Lots of training of his pilots on how to conduct air combat. A true leader. They shot down something like 126 Japanese planes in 12 weeks immediately after moving to Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.
No, whether as to salvage or patent or copyright law, although failure to assert a claim as to a particular thing can cause a lapse of the claim as to that thing, that does weaken potential claims as to other things.
In other stories, the Navy admitted that they wanted the aircraft for its value as a museum holding.
If I were a rich man, that is what I would like to do. My dream is to restore a P-47. There are only 23 or so left in the world.
Man gets to keep rare WWII airplane
Navy had fought him for crash wreckage
BY DAVID HAWLEY
Pioneer Press
It's taken six years and a special act of Congress, but an aircraft mechanic from Princeton, Minn., is the undisputed owner of a rare World War II Corsair fighter plane that he salvaged 15 years ago from a North Carolina swamp.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis approved a settlement that ends a lawsuit filed a year ago by the U.S. Justice Department against Lex Cralley. The lawsuit was the climax of an escalating battle of wills that had been going on since 1999 between the 50-year-old Northwest Airlines mechanic and the U.S. Navy.
"I've been under a cloud so long, it almost seems like a dream that it's over," Cralley said Tuesday.
In celebration, Cralley said he plans to exhibit the still-skeletal and disjointed remains of the Corsair at the annual Experimental Aircraft Association show next August in Oshkosh, Wis.
"It remains a piece of naval aviation history to be shared," said Cralley, whose dream is to restore the plane to flying condition — something that will take many years and millions of dollars, according to aviation history experts. It's estimated that fewer than 25 Corsairs still are flying.
In 1990, Cralley salvaged the remains of the fighter plane that had been buried in the muck of a North Carolina swamp for 46 years after it crashed there during a training flight 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."
Cralley transported the pieces of the shattered plane to a workshop behind his home in rural Princeton, registered it as a "non-airworthy model" with the Federal Aviation Administration and began the painstaking work of restoration.
Nearly a decade later, however, the Navy came calling. Though the world is littered with the abandoned artifacts of war, the official policy of the Navy is that its property is always its property — forever.
And the Navy was particularly interested in the remnants of the plane in Cralley's shed. Military aviation enthusiasts say it's the only Corsair of its kind known to exist.
Specifically, it's a Corsair that was 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 the wartime demand for new planes.
Brewster, which no longer exists, built 735 Corsairs — Cralley's was the 119th — compared to more than 12,000 F4U Corsairs built by Vought, which is now headquartered in Dallas.
Cralley said he was inundated with phone calls and messages after word of the lawsuit became public last year. Most of them came from people who wanted to express anger or outrage, he said.
One came from U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., whose district includes the original crash site near Cherry Point Marine Corps Training Station.
Jones, who called the dispute a "laughable poster child" for big government run amok, introduced a measure called a "private bill" in the House that specifically directed the Navy to convey ownership of the plane to Cralley. The Senate version was introduced by Minnesota's Norm Coleman.
"Here was a good solid American citizen who wants to preserve naval air history at his own expense and the Big Brother Navy comes down and says, 'No you can't,' " Jones said Tuesday. "To me, it was just ridiculous."
The measure was attached to the Ronald Reagan Defense Bill that was enacted in October. But it took another six months for attorneys representing the government and Cralley to agree to the terms of the gift.
"I'm not going to speak negatively about the donative's efforts, but the gift seemed to come awfully hard," said Boyd Ratchye, the Minneapolis attorney who represents Cralley.
In the end, Ratchye said Cralley got the deal he wanted, but he added that the agreement does not set a precedent for the resolution of disputes between the Navy and other private collectors of salvaged military hardware.
Deborah Sciascia, an attorney for the Naval Inventory Control Point in Philadelphia, referred calls to naval public affairs. In turn, they referred calls to the public affairs office of the Department of Justice, which could not be reached for comment.
However, in a letter that accompanied the settlement, the Navy's assistant director, Helen D. Rosen, stated that the agreement "is in the best interests of the United States."
Totally awesome that the guy won. Too bad he had to fight the Navy to keep the plane, though. It's gonna look saaaweeeeet once it's restored.
Don't quite agree. The Zero was very good - when it came out. It had a range of over 1000 miles with drop tanks, 300mph performance, and outstanding low to medium speed manueverability. When it first appeared (1939) it was one of the premier fighters in the world. It's performance was so good for the time that when the US military was informed of the planes existance in early 1940 - and provided with photos and movies - it refused to accept that a plane with the reported performance could exist (documented in Martin Caiden's "Ragged Rugged Warriors")
US pilots always had better luck against the Zero than European and Asian pilots. Hell, the AVG was beating the crap out of Zeros with P-40B Tomahawks, a plane that in almost every regard was inferior to the Zero. Yet the British in Malasia, with pilots that had experianced the Battle of Britain and flying Hawker Huricanes, were literally cut to shreds by Zero pilots.
The Jap pilots were very very good (at least in 41 and 42), but so were a lot of the US pilots, and the Marine and Navy pilots in particular were extremely creative in figuring out how to get the best performance out of their aircraft. They were simply more creative than the average Jap pilot - although guys like Suboro Sakai (sp?) would have been top notch no matter what they flew.
Even at the end of the war, pilots in the Pacific were told "Never dogfight a Zero."
The AVG never actually saw a Zero in combat, actually. The Japanese Navy did deploy Zeros to combat in China for a few months, but this was not at the same time or location the AVG was operating.
The AVG was up against the Japanese ARMY, which had no Zeros and never had any Zeros the entire war, and actually most of their kills were of Japanese Army Bombers and somewhat primitive Japanese Army Fighters that didn't have retractable landing gear. However like German "88s" in Europe (all German artillery was called 88s by American troops even when there were no 88s anywhere near them) for whatever reason all Japanese fighters tended to be called "Zeros" in World War II.
Yet the British in Malasia, with pilots that had experianced the Battle of Britain and flying Hawker Huricanes, were literally cut to shreds by Zero pilots.
The initial British pilots in Malaya had no BoB experience whatsoever; they were the worst trained pilots in the RAF.
Fighter tactics were completely different in the Pacific than the ETO. The Brits were used to dogfighting ME-109s, but doing so against Zeros was suicide. The Brits did not adjust their tactics to the situation.
Ahhhh...the Vought F4U Corsair. One of my favorite aircraft. Beautiful.
I stand by my Corsair remark--but, yeah, that P-38 is "saaaweeeeet" 2 =-)
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No it didn't. It was seriously deficient in durability, roll rate at high speeds, dive speed, compared to the F4F, P-40, etc.
Turn radius is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, almost irrelevant component of air combat.
That the F4F had a positive kill ration is due to tactics
If it had a positive kill ratio then it wasn't "outclassed"...end of story. It means the F4F was a better aircraft when its advantages over the Zero were used properly.
Even at the end of the war, pilots in the Pacific were told "Never dogfight a Zero."
Actually it's generally true to avoid dogfights at all costs, in almost any aircraft. Almost nobody became an ace in World War II by dogfighting; 90%+ of kills were of aircraft that never saw their attacker.
What World War II revealed was that buzzing around in tight turns in dogfights was a loser strategy, and the Zero was a loser aircraft designed for that losing strategy. "Boom and Zoom" (diving from above, attack, climb, rinse, repeat) reigned supreme.
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