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Broadwater County Museum Open House is Packed
Author: Matt Nelson

Matt Nelson

Linda Huth, the Curator of the Broadwater County Museum, gave an excellent presentation of the Museum’s history on Sunday, May 17th. The main topic was the story of a World War II pilot from Townsend, USMC LT. Robert T. (Craig) Pennington, who died for unknown reasons while flying a Brewster F3C-1 Corsair in North Carolina and crashed in Dismal Swamp. He was stationed at USMC base Cherry Point and was flying a ground-controlled intercept training flight of a Mitchell Bomber.

Linda said, “With this being the 50th anniversary of the museum and being so close to Memorial Day, it is appropriate to talk about this. He was born on July 1, 1922, and died on December 19, 1944. A letter dated December 27, 1944, to Mrs. Robin C. Pennington stated that he was missing after a routine flight. He did not return with the rest of the flight, and a search was made for his plane and him but was unsuccessful.

His sister, Tracy and brother, Pat and a friend, Ralph Stanley, went to North Carolina to be with Robin’s wife, Alice (Darcy) Mongrain, and to form search parties in Dismal Swamp, where he was known to have gone down. Robin and Alice had been married for 7 weeks.

At the end of three weeks of a continuous hunt, the body was found. It was about a mile from where the plane had landed and it was transported home to Townsend. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery.

In 1990, Lex Cralley, an airplane mechanic from Princeton, Minnesota with a passion for preserving World War II aviation history, salvaged pieces of the Pennington’s single-engine plane and registered it with the Federal Aviation Administration as ‘Non-airworthy’ and then began the painstaking work of restoration. 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.

A newspaper article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press dated March 27, 2004, stated that the Justice Department was suing Mr. Cralley, seeking the plane, the cost of returning it, and compensation for any damage since Cralley recovered it. The official policy of the Navy is that its property is always its property – forever. The feds arrived at Cralley’s rural home near Princeton, Minn. and spent hours inspecting the wreckage of the WWII Corsair fighter plane that had been resting in a machine shed behind Cralley’s house since 1990.

Cralley also said he got support from Minnesota’s former U.S. Senator, Rod Grams, from U.S. Senator Norm Coleman from Minnesota and from U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones from North Carolina. A spokeswoman for Jones’ office said the congressman would be introducing a ‘private bill’ that would specifically convey the Corsair from the Navy to Cralley. It had taken six years and a special act of Congress, but Lex Cralley is now the undisputed owner of this rare World War II Corsair fighter plane. A U.S. District Judge approved a settlement that ended the lawsuit. The lawsuit was the climax of an escalating battle of wills that had been going on since 1999 between the 50-year-old Cralley and the U.S. Navy.

In 2010, Eileen Perry, Robin Pennington’s sister-in-law, emailed Lex Cralley in response to an email he had sent her regarding Pennington. We do not have a copy of that email, but evidently, Cralley had contacted Eilene asking for information about Robin. Eileen had sent Cralley information about Robin. In response to Eileen’s email to him, Cralley sent back an email in May of 2011 that said: ‘In November of last year, I was contacted by a very well to do group starting a museum of naval aircraft in San Diego, with a strong desire to rebuild your brother-in-law’s Corsair to once again fly. I was initially hesitant to agree to sell, but after much thought and some prayer I agreed to sell them the plane. The week before Christmas we transported the project Corsair to Breckenridge Tx where they are hard at work to restore the plane to better than new condition. They hope to have it flying in 3 years or less. The company has restored many other Corsairs and other vintage planes to fly from similar conditions.'”

Ezell Aviation in Breckenridge did restore the Corsair, and it was flown again in 2018. Later, it was sold to the National Museum of WWII Aviation in Colorado Springs, CO, where it is now located.

Lt. Pennington was awarded the Purple Heart following his death.

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Image 1 Caption: The attendees at Linda Huth's presentation of the history of the Broadwater County Museum. Photo Credit: Nancy Marks
Image 2 Caption: Lt. Robin "Bob" Pennington. Photo From Linda Huth's Presentation
Image 3 Caption: Lt. Pennington's Corsair Photo From Linda Huth's Presentation
Image 4 Caption: Lt. Pennington's rebuilt Corsair F3A flown on October 12, 2024. Photo Credit: Dave DeVore, National Museum of WWII Aviation