Maybe it was intuition, perhaps just coincidence.  This morning, I stumbled onto the obituary of Edmund Cantilli, a former safety engineer with the NY/NJ Port Authority and aeronautical safety expert.  Edmund was also an early member of the Italic Institute.

The coincidence was that today’s blog was to be about Vincent Burnelli, a pioneer in aviation design.  Edmund had written two articles about Burnelli in our Italic Way Magazine back in 1992 and 1997 (issues XIX & XXVII).  Edmund just passed on Saturday at age 98.  It was those articles that prompted me to check the internet for Edmund’s whereabouts.  A sad discovery.

As for Vincent Burnelli (1895 – 1964), he came to mind after I saw photos of the B-2 Stealth Bomber recently used to knock out Iran’s nuclear sites.  Essentially, a “flying wing” the B-2 hasn’t the tubular fuselage common in all fixed-wing aircraft.  Although you will hardly find the name Burnelli in any research of “flying wings” or “lifting bodies,” Vincent Burnelli was one of the pioneers in those designs.  He is credited by reliable sources with practical retractable landing gear and improvements in wing and flap developments, all for better performance and safety.

But it was Burnelli’s concept of widening the passenger fuselage so it added to the lift factor of the wings.  His designs added 60% more lift to the plane, allowing the passenger compartment to be reinforced for safety.  A wider body also means more passenger comfort and cargo inside.  Think back to the “Miracle on the Hudson” in 2009, when Capt. Sully crash-landed his Airbus 320 on the NYC river and miraculously evacuated the plane before it sank.  Had he landed a Burnelli design it would be still floating!

Among the virtues of Burnelli’s designs are:

• Fuel is isolated in the wings and not additionally under the passenger cabin, a factor in the explosion of TWA 800 in 1996.
• Planes land and take off at speeds well under 100 mph, increasing survivability in accidents.  In fact, a crash of Burnelli’s UB-14 in 1935 had no fatalities due to the reinforced cabin and slower landing speed.
• Segregation of landing gear & fuel means less likelihood of fire from a landing-gear collapse.
• Higher weight-carrying capacity
• Allows carrying twice the volume of similarly powered aircraft
• Allows access & repairs to many aircraft functions in-flight (including landing gear).

The Burnelli Company still exists on paper and can be found on the internet.  Its staff is fiercely loyal to their late founder and have accused much of the aviation establishment for stealing Burnelli designs, undermining his business, and expunging his record.  An article in Smithsonian Magazine (Nov, 1989) by David Noland examined much of Burnelli’s trials and tribulations.  He described a pivotal event that crushed Burnelli’s career, which is part legendary.  In 1940, as the U.S. prepares for war, Burnelli’s design for an A-1 Fighter Bomber wins over rivals Boeing, Douglas, and Lockheed.  It has the support of General Hap Arnold of the Army Air Corps.  Invited to the White House to witness FDR sign the contract, Burnelli lets out that his primary financial backer is Sun Oil magnate Arthur Pew, the contract is never signed.  Pew was a Republican donor to FDR’s election opponent Wendell Willkie.  With the rejection came a government policy to stick with traditional designs.  Burnelli continued designing after the war but he had to compete against war surplus planes like the DC-3, which were sold dirt cheap for $5,000 each.

Burnelli will have to remain one of our proprietary secrets, like Italian American Giuseppe Bellanca, another aviation genius.  A Bellanca airplane was Lindbergh’s first choice for his Atlantic crossing in 1927—it had a front windshield (instead of a periscope) and could carry a copilot.  In fact, it easily made the same crossing two weeks after Lindbergh’s.

As in the case of telephone inventor Antonio Meucci, the competition always seems to have an edge. -JLM