Had Taken Parts From Federal Land In July Of 2008

The federal government has reached a settlement with Georgia-based aircraft restoration company The B-25 Group which removed parts from the wreckage of an F-82 Twin Mustang that went down outside Fairbanks, AK in 1950.

The plane had been one of a flight of three from Ladd AFB which took off for a training mission on January 16, 1950. Two military service members were fatally injured when the plane went down on the Tanana Flats.

U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler said in a news release that the Air Force had abandoned the accident site in 1961 without recovering the airplane. Nearly six decades after it went down, the B-25 Group found the wreckage and removed some of the parts. The salvagers, hired by Edward Thomas Reilly Jr, of Douglas, GA, according to the Alaska Dispatch, had initially said they found the parts in a salvage yard in Fairbanks. Even though the site was on public land, they group needed the permission of the Federal Government to take the parts.

To settle the case, The B-25 Group agreed to pay $55,000 to the federal government. Fifty thousand of that will be spent on archaeological work to recover the rest of the F-82, with $5,000 assessed as a civil penalty that will go to the Bureau of Land Management to protect historic aviation properties in Alaska. Prosecutors allowed Reilly to keep the parts, which have likely already been incorporated into another restoration. As part of the settlement, the company will "provide patterns and specifications for the parts it recovered" for potential use in restoring another example of the rare airplane.

(Image provided by Boeing)

FMI: www.boeing.com/boeing/history/bna/p82.page