World War I created a great demand for aviation know-how, and Burnelli used the opportunity to establish himself in the aircraft industry. During the course of the war, he worked for the International, Continental, and Lawson aircraft companies in such varied positions as engineer, designer and superintendent. He also invented an aerial torpedo plane and designed a plane for the Brazilian government.

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Burnelli also became interested in designing transport aircraft, and the fascination would follow him through the rest of his life. In 1919, while working for Milwaukee’s Lawson Aircraft Co., Burnelli designed one of the first commercial transports, a 26-passenger biplane. Despite the project’s success, Burnelli was disappointed with the resulting design.

As an engineer, Burnelli believed that all of an aircraft’s basic components should be designed to help it maintain flight, which was not the case in transports of the time. The fuselage in a conventionally designed plane, he felt, was only a box to carry passengers and cargo and provided no lift. Because the Lawson transport possessed this weakness, he referred to it as a “streetcar with wings.”

Burnelli was determined to create a plane where all the parts helped provide the lift needed to keep it in the air. “The air is the roadbed of an airplane,” said Lawson, “and I decided I’d leave streetcars on the ground from then on.” For the vital task of providing the lift, designers generally relied entirely upon the wings. Burnelli, however, felt a lighter and much more efficient aircraft was possible if the fuselage as well as the wings provided lift. He soon set about designing just such a transport. In 1920, Burnelli teamed up with T.T. Remington to create his first lifting-fuselage design.

The plane, the RB-1, was a twin-engine biplane that incorporated many of the unique features that would be associated with Burnelli-designed transports for the next five decades.

The most recognizable feature of the Burnelli-type transport was, of course, the wide, flat, airfoil-shaped fuselage, a feature that provided an estimated 40 percent of the aircraft’s lift. Its unique engine placement was equally characteristic of a Burnelli design. Rather than placing the engines in nacelles between the wings, as was the custom, Burnelli mounted the twin power plants side by side on the front edge of the airfoil-shaped fuselage.

Burnelli’s idea had many advantages over more conventional engine placement. By eliminating the nacelles, Burnelli’s made his planes lighter than comparable transports of more conventional design. Burnelli’s method also reduced stress in the wings at the points where the engines were mounted and reduced the plane’s frontal area. Those changes decreased drag and improved the aerodynamics of a Burnelli-designed plane.

The design also had safety advantages. Some have claimed that the flat, rectangular fuselage of the Burnelli transport was stronger and provided more protection for passengers than the long, narrow fuselage of a conventional liner. In addition, Burnelli’s design placed the engines well in front of the passenger compartment, which, experts agreed, helped absorb shock in the event of a crash. It also kept the propellers well away from the passengers’ area, which reduced both noise and danger for the passengers in the case of propeller blade failure. The arrangement even allowed the flight crew partial access to the plane’s engines from inside the cabin during flight.

Burnelli and others often referred to his lifting-fuselage aircraft as flying wings. The term, strictly speaking, was not entirely accurate. The fuselage of a Burnelli-design aircraft, although airfoil shaped, was distinctly not the same component as the wing. In addition, Burnelli transports invariably had a twin tail. In his later designs, the tail was mounted on booms at the rear of the plane.

Burnelli was convinced that he had created a truly revolutionary aircraft design, and used his efforts tirelessly to gain its acceptance from a skeptical aircraft industry. From the 1920s until Burnelli’s death in 1964, his transports would remain a constant, if largely unappreciated, presence on the U.S. aviation scene.

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