Burnelli's Safe Aircraft & The Conspiracy To Supress It

Vincent Burnelli was born November 22, 1895, in Temple, Texas, and died on June 21, 1964 in Long Island, New York. He developed a 'lifting body design of aircraft in the 1920s, long before anyone else was working on the concept, and built a number of successful planes on this principle throughout the 1930s. He forsaw the increased dangers inherent in higher take-off and landing speeds coupled with greater mass and greater fuel loads, and determined to build a crashproof aircraft.

The basic idea behind Burnelli's lifting-body theory is that the fuselage can contribute at least 50 per cent of the airplane's lift if it is shaped like an airfoil, providing all kinds of advantages over conventional airplanes, particularly with regard to safety and performance. Because of the additional lift, the plane could operate with smaller engines and a lighter fuel load. More weight could be devoted to safety features, such as better-anchored seats and luggage bins. The fuselage would be sturdily constructed as a single unit, instead of in tubular sections that are riveted together, as it is in conventional planes, and its "skin" would not be weakened where windows and doors are placed. Fuel tanks are kept away from the passenger compartment and do not rupture in a crash.

The unusual safety features of the design were testified to by a test pilot who, because of some faulty maintenance work, crashed one of Burnelli's planes, a UB-14, into the ground in New Jersey at about 135 MPH on Jan. 13, 1935. The pilot reported flying the aircraft into the ground from about 200-foot altitude with the wings nearly vertical. Thwe right wing absorbed the first shock, and the impact caused the airplane to cartwheel. INstead of disintegrating as you would expecet in a n impact of htis nature, the body remained intact, and no fuel leaked from the wing tanks . The pilot reported his belief that

". . . The box-body strength of this type . . . saved myself and the engineer crew, and had the cabin been fully occupied with passengers with safety belts properly attached, no passengers would have been injured. This crash landing . . . is an extraordinary example of the crash safety that can be provided by the lifting body type of design."

By 1941 Burnelli had won three government competitions to build Air Corps planes. General Hap Arnold is quoted as saying in 1940 "In my opinion it is essential, in the interest of national defense, that this procurement be authorized."

However, Roosevelt reportedly changed his mind about authorizing a go-ahead for the Burnelli planes when he found out that the project was being backed by a businessman who had helped finance the political campaign of one of Roosevelt's rivals, Wendell Willkie. The War Department subsequently labeled Burnelli's designs "inefficient," stamped them "Top Secret" and buried them in its files, where they remain to this day.

Outside the military, Burnelli advocates claim that Boeing and the Smithsonian collaborated to supress Burnelli's designs, while NASA still claim their Dr. Eggers conceived of the lifting-body in 1947, when Burnelli had actually flown lifting bodies over twenty years before. NASA in fact conducted wind-tunnel tests for Burnelli in the mid-forties. The New England Air Museum has refused to restore the 1947 CBY-3 since they acquired it in 1974 and are also refusing to sell it, thereby condemning the Burnelli CBY-3 to obscurity.

On the excellent and comprehensive Aircraft Safety & Suppressed Technology Website

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