Burnelli and His Flying Fuselage - September ‘97 Aviation History Feature

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Burnelli and His Flying Fuselage

Vincent J. Burnelli wanted to incorporate maximum efficiency in therealm of air transport. The unorthodox result pioneered the wide-body cabin and the lifting-fuselage design.

By John D. Pelzer

There must have been some odd looks on the faces of the Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization officials on hand to witness the demonstration flight of the Burnelli CBY-3. The different-looking transport plane roared down the runway at Montreal’s Cartierville Airport in August 1945 and flew into what would turn out to be a short history. Like the Douglas DC-3, the most famous transport aircraft of the period, the CBY-3 was a large, twin-engine, all-metal monoplane. There, however, the resemblance ended.

The two engines of the DC-3, like those of most multiengine aircraft, were mounted in the wings; the engines of the CBY-3 were mounted side by side on the forward edge of the fuselage. The DC-3 had a conventional single tail section at the rear of the fuselage; the CBY-3 had a twin tail mounted on booms extending rearward from the main fuselage. Most unusual of all, however, was the unique shape of the CBY-3’s fuselage. Rather than the circular cross-section main fuselage of the DC-3, the CBY-3 had a rectangular cross-section fuselage, 20 feet wide, in the airfoil shape of a wing when seen from the side.

Even more remarkable than the CBY-3’s appearance was its performance. It could carry a ton more payload than the DC-3. Most impressive of all was the fact that test pilot Clyde Pangborn guided the CBY-3 into the air with a takeoff run of only 650 feet.

What was the miracle airplane that made its test flight on that Canadian summer day? Why aren’t its wondrous capabilities better known? The answers to these questions are only a small part of one of the most interesting stories of the youth of America’s aviation industry–that of designer Vincent J. Burnelli.

Since the early days of aviation, aircraft designers have dreamed of utilizing the payload-carrying space of the fuselage to create the lift needed to keep a plane in the air. Such a plane could, if the design problems were worked out, carry more, climb quicker, and stay in the air with less power than aircraft of more conventional design.

The concept is almost as old as manned flight itself. In 1909, Professor Hugo Junkers envisioned a large “flying wing” aircraft capable of carrying hundreds of passengers. Other similar designs followed, from the famed XB-35 and XB-49 flying-wing designs of Jack Northrop during the 1940s and 1950s to the Stealth aircraft of the 1980s, the Lockheed F-117A fighter and the Northrop B-2 bomber. But no one tried harder or spent more years making the concept a reality than Vincent J. Burnelli.

Like his transport, Burnelli was a product of the pioneer days of American aviation. Born in Temple, Texas, on November 22, 1895, he received his education along the southern border of the United States. He attended public schools in Temple and in Monterrey, Mexico, before moving east to spend three years studying at St. Peter’s College in New Jersey. From his early youth, Burnelli showed an interest in aviation. He first learned to fly gliders on Staten Island, N.Y., in 1915, and graduated to piloting powered aircraft in Lincoln, Neb., in 1919.

Designing aircraft rather than flying them, however, was Burnelli’s greatest passion. Along with friend John Carisi, he first began experimenting with gliders in 1912. By 1915, the pair had produced their first powered design, an open biplane they built in Queens, N. Y. They tested it at the Hempstead Plains Airfield, which was later to gain much greater fame in aviation history as Long Island’s Roosevelt Field. Always concerned about practicality, Burnelli and his partner wasted no time putting their creation to work. “We used it for barnstorming,” Burnelli later recalled of his first design. “You could make $500 to $1,000 in those days working a fair, and that was big money.”

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