In May 1930, after 10 years of trying, Burnelli received a patent for his transport design. With this assurance, Burnelli and his firm redoubled their efforts to obtain sufficient orders to allow the full-scale production of the UB-20. During 1931 and 1932, advertisements appeared regularly in aviation trade publications touting the advantages of the Burnelli design. Such efforts, however, were doomed to failure in those Depression-plagued years.

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Despite their cutting-edge technology, the Burnelli transports were not pretty, so gaining acceptance for such an unusual and revolutionary design was not an easy task. Burnelli himself unwittingly contributed to this problem as well. By insisting upon building the lifting-fuselage design himself, he kept other, larger manufacturers from incorporating his ideas into their aircraft. In addition, the rapid development of more powerful aircraft engines in the 1920s and 1930s also worked to the transport’s disadvantage. The increasingly powerful engines available on the market often more than compensated for the conventional aircraft design weaknesses that gave a performance edge to the Burnelli design.

Still, Burnelli was tireless in his efforts to demonstrate the practicality and efficiency of his planes to the public and the aviation industry. During the 1920s, for instance, the RB-2 became a portable showroom for Essex automobiles. Fitted out to carry eight passengers, a fully equipped office and an Essex coupe, the plane flew a promotional tour of the United States. On another occasion, the Sun Oil Co. wanted to prove that its fuel could start a car even in the cold temperatures found at high altitudes. In an unsuccessful effort to substantiate this claim, the UB-20 flew over Long Island with a Ford roadster suspended beneath the fuselage.

In 1934, Uppercu-Burnelli changed its name to the Burnelli Aircraft Co. Its commitment to perfecting and promoting the Burnelli design never waned. In 1935, a new prototype passenger liner, the UB-14, appeared on the market. The UB-14 retained all the advantages of the UB-20 and Burnelli’s other designs. “It is claimed that the cabin space per passenger is much larger than for any conventional type airplane so far built,” Aviation magazine, the forerunner of the contemporary Aviation Weekly, said in September 1935.

The UB-14, like its predecessors, failed to attract sufficient orders or the kind of financial backing necessary to put the plane into full production. Burnelli therefore turned more and more of his attention abroad to seek financial backing for his designs from the European aviation industry. Several European companies expressed interest. In July 1936, Britain’s Scottish Aircraft Co. was preparing to build its own version of the UB-14 at its Willesden plant. Holland’s Aviolanda Aircraft Co. had also expressed interest in the design. To capitalize upon that foreign attention, Burnelli decided to send the UB-14 to Europe.

Burnelli first planned to send the plane to Europe in a spectacular transatlantic flight. To fly the prototype, Burnelli obtained the services of Clyde Pangborn, a well-known pilot. Pangborn was a longtime supporter of the Burnelli design and had a long association with Burnelli aircraft. A former World War I aviator and barnstorming pilot, Pangborn first achieved national fame in 1931 when he and his partner, Hugh Herndon, flew their specially designed, high-wing Bellanca Skyrocket monoplane from Tokyo to Wenatchee, Wash., covering the 4,600 miles in 41 hours, 13 minutes.

To extend their plane’s range, Pangborn and Herndon had jettisoned the landing gear soon after takeoff and made an undignified belly landing upon their arrival in the United States. Nonetheless, they became the first men to fly nonstop across the Pacific, and they collected the $25,000 cash prize offered for the feat by a Tokyo newspaper. Clearly, Pangborn was an ideal choice to pilot the Burnelli plane. His previous achievements in the air alone would have been sufficient to attract the attention of the aviation world to the flight.

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