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" with the Federal Aviation Administration and began the painstaking work of restoration, which remains far from completion.