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.

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.

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.

In 1921, Burnelli organized the Remington-Burnelli Co. to help promote his design. Over the next few years, the company set out to produce a series of transport prototypes based upon his revolutionary concept. Each incorporated the most modern features, often before they appeared on more conventionally designed aircraft of the time. In 1924, the RB-2, an air freight version of the RB-1, was introduced. The RB-2 incorporated corrugated metal construction.

By 1928, Burnelli joined forces with banker and Skylines Inc. president Paul B. Chapman to build the CB-16. The plane not only was Burnelli’s first monoplane transport but also incorporated all-metal construction and retractable landing gear. In 1929, the aileron cables became crossed during maintenance, and the plane crashed during testing. Both the pilot, Lieutenant George Pond, and his co-pilot emerged from the wreckage unhurt, a tribute to both the strength and the safety of the Burnelli design.

To build the Chapman Airliner, Burnelli had rented space and tools at Aeromarine’s Keyport, N.J., plant. The arrangement led to his next business enterprise in 1929 when Burnelli joined Aeromarine backer Inglis M. Uppercu to form a new company, Uppercu-Burnelli Corp. Uppercu served as the firm’s president and sales manager, while Burnelli worked as a vice president and the firm’s chief engineer.

The company soon established operations at Aeromarine’s Keyport plant. The UB-20 was Burnelli’s first offering at Uppercu-Burnelli. The 20-passenger airliner clearly captured the public’s imagination when it made its first public showing on February 7, 1930, at the New York Aviation Show. The New York Times reported that Burnelli’s aircraft was the largest plane in the show and the centre [sic] of airplane interest in the exposition.

Probably the greatest technical breakthrough of Burnelli’s UB-20 was its all-metal construction. The new all-metal Burnelli 20-passenger transport…incorporates a new type of structure possessing important advantages in strength-to-weight efficiency, Burnelli wrote about the liner in Aero Digest. Outstanding advantages of this type of construction are reduction of fabricating expense and greater durability afforded by the heavy, flat, stressed skin covering, Burnelli observed. Tests at the time substantiated many of Burnelli’s claims about the superiority of his design. An article in Aero Digest in 1930 stated that the Burnelli transport was 2.76 percent lighter and had a smaller frontal resistance area and greater lift than a conventionally designed twin-engine transport of the same size.

The designer’s activities during the period, however, were not confined entirely to large transport aircraft. In 1929, Burnelli designed and built a smaller version of his airplane called the GX-3, a three-seat, open-cockpit, twin-engine monoplane as an entry for the $150,000 Guggenheim Safe Aircraft Competition.

The competition, sponsored by millionaire Daniel Guggenheim, was intended to promote the development of commercial aircraft. Burnelli’s aircraft did not win the competition. Although it was clearly one of the most original and innovative entries, it arrived too late at New York’s Mitchell Field to take part in the competition’s official trials. Despite the setback, the GX-3’s performance was reported to have been excellent.

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