Although the transatlantic flight eventually fell through, Burnelli went ahead with plans for a European demonstration and had the plane disassembled and sent to Europe by ship. Initially, however, things did not go well for Burnelli’s European enterprise. The British customs service kept the disassembled aircraft in crates for months at Southampton, England. To make matters worse, the Scottish Aircraft Co., which held rights to build the Burnelli design, had gone into receivership before completing its Burnelli prototype.

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Eventually, however, Burnelli’s fortunes in Europe began to improve. Finally released from British customs, the UB-14 was reassembled in Holland and, in December 1937, with Pangborn at the controls, made its long-awaited demonstration flight at Hatfield, England.

The flight had the desired effect upon Great Britain’s Cunliffe-Owen Aircraft Corp., a new aircraft firm started by Sir Hugh Cunliffe-Owen of the British American Tobacco Co. The firm undertook to build a European Burnelli transport. The resulting plane, the OA-1 Clyde Clipper, briefly saw production in Europe. Burnelli’s long-sought success, however, was short-lived. Only one plane had been completed when World War II broke out in Europe. With Britain’s aircraft industry devoted almost entirely to military aircraft, no more Clyde Clipper transports were built. The sole British Burnelli aircraft was pressed into service by the RAF and was eventually turned over to the Free French Air Force in Africa, where at one point it served as the personal transport of General Charles de Gaulle. Worn out by its wartime service, the Clyde Clipper reportedly met its end as the centerpiece of a V-J Day (victory over Japan) bonfire.

Throughout his career, Burnelli made several attempts to adapt his lifting-fuselage design to military use. Those efforts, however, fared no better than his civilian designs. Rumors circulated that financial backing from a political opponent of President Roosevelt kept Burnelli from gaining the kind of government support enjoyed by many of his competitors. Whatever the reason, Burnelli did not share in the lucrative military contracts enjoyed by other aircraft manufacturers at the time.

In 1935, Burnelli submitted his design for the two-engine bomber, the A-1, to the U.S. Army Air Corps. The design got no further than the mock-up stage.

In 1943, Burnelli transformed his A-1 bomber design into a lifting-fuselage glider, the XCG-16, which was capable of carrying 40 troops or 4 tons of cargo. Like his powered aircraft, the glider never saw production. Despite excellent test results, only one prototype of the XCG-16 was built.

The war, however, did not keep Burnelli from trying to build his transports. In 1944, Burnelli joined the Canadian Car and Foundry Ltd. of Montreal. The firm worked to adapt the Burnelli design for sale to the Canadian market.

Special problems faced Canadian aviation. Rugged wilderness conditions and primitive facilities were even more common in Canada than they were in the United States. Canadian Car and Foundry sought to utilize the advantage of the Burnelli design to meet the heavy demands of wilderness flying. The fruit of this collaboration was the Burnelli CBY-3.

The plane was typical of Burnelli’s earlier transport designs. With a length of just over 57 feet, a wing span of 86 feet and a gross weight of 27,000 pounds, the twin-tailed liner carried 24 passengers. It was powered by a pair of 1,200-hp Pratt and Whitney Twin-Wasp engines.

The test flight at Montreal in August 1945, with Pangborn at the controls, proved the plane admirably suited to wilderness flying. “With approximately the dimensions and performance of such conventional air transports as the DC-3, it is claimed…an air-foil profile enables the plane to carry another ton of payload,” reported one newspaper story. Even more important for its wilderness purpose, the plane managed to take off and land within 650 feet, a decided advantage when operating from primitive airfields.

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