January 26, 2001
Richard Wood
NASA Langley Research Center
Hampton, VA 23681-2199
Dear Mr. Wood,
Thank you for your letter of January 16th
and the enclosed copies of your paper, AIAA 2001-0311 FLYING
WINGS/FLYING FUSELAGES.
While it is good to see the recognition
of Mr. Burnelli in an AIAA paper, after they repeatedly
refused to recognize him, it is regrettable that he was
mentioned as simply another designer in the field of many. In
fact, the aeronautical genius of Mr. Burnelli places him head
and shoulders above all the rest. After all, he was the first
to require the cabin / cargo compartment of an aircraft to
contribute significantly to lift. He reduced this to practice
with the Burnelli RB-1 in 1921 and received a patent for this
principle of design in 1930!
Mr. Burnelli had to wait nine years for the
Patent Office to issue him a patent (1,758,498) for this
invention. One must assume the Patent Office wished to ensure
the patent did not infringe on anyone else's existing rights.
Clearly, no one else was found to pre-date Mr. Burnelli's
conception and reduction to practice of this principle of
design.
In short, Mr. Burnelli combined the most
efficient structure with the most efficient aerodynamics. To
illustrate this, in the mid-1930s, Dr. Alexander Klemin, the
Dean of Aeronautics at the Guggenheim School of Aeronautics,
New York University, designated Mr. Burnelli's concept as "The
Burnelli Principle of Design". In 1939, Dr. Klemin, with a
group of outstanding pilots and wind tunnel engineers from
both NYU and NACA, signed the following statement:
"We regard the Burnelli principle of design
as a valuable and fundamental contribution to the art of
aviation. Its application provides larger accommodations, more
comfort and greater pleasure in faster air travel. The
disposition of the power plants, logically inherent in the
design, enhances safety and reliability far beyond
conventional practice. The perseverance shown in its
successful development is the best in American
tradition."
The Burnelli Principle of design is, without
a doubt, the ultimate configuration for the safest and the
most economical air transportation vehicle. The proof is in
the planes built by Mr. Burnelli and their performance. This
is further confirmed by the NASA/Boeing BWB which, along with
many others, embraces Mr.Burnelli's 1940s technology.
With regards to safety, on September 19,
1939, General H. H. Arnold, the Chief of the U.S. Air Forces,
highly recommended Burnelli planes to the Secretary of War
and, regarding safety, stated:
"The [Burnelli] design embodies extremely
good factors of safety -- considerably higher than the
streamlined fuselage type." General Arnold ended his report
thusly: "In my opinion, it is essential, in the interest of
national defense, that this procurement be authorized."
Have any of the other designs mentioned in
your paper received such high praise?
The Northrop/Grumman B-2 is not a derivative
of Northrop's B-35/49 technology but a poor copy of Burnelli's
1940s technology right down to the 1945 engine installation -
U.S. Patent 2,586,299. The same applies to the NASA/Boeing
BWB. From your original email to aircrash.org, I have no doubt
that you have imagined the cost of this re-creation - 50 years
after Burnelli originated the design!
With regards to the pictures found in your
paper, I take exception to the implication that the 9a picture
of the UB-14 was inspired by Northrop's first plane (9b).
Northrop's first plane (1929) was undoubtedly inspired by the
Burnelli CB-16 of 1927. The implication of the 9a picture of
the UB-14 is also contradictory with figure 11 of the same
paper, which correctly shows the relationship between Burnelli
and Northrop, the latter being the beneficiary of the former
and not the other way around.
When all
is said and done in the Flying Wing/Lifting Fuselage field, Mr.
Burnelli was the unique pioneer. I draw your attention to AIAA 98-0760 (1998)
(copy enclosed), which states:
"The lifting-body airplane
concept, pioneered by Vincent Burnelli in the early 1920s,
seems to fascinate every generation of airplane designers".
This confirms the truth of the matter and
reinforces the fact that your paper, presented at AIAA, Reno,
on January 8-11, is an attempt by NASA and AIAA to muddy the
waters and to demean the stature of Mr. Burnelli.
With the above in mind, the distinction made
between a Lifting Body and a Lifting Fuselage, when they are
actually synonyms, is absurd. After all, the body of an
aircraft and the fuselage of an aircraft represent the
identical element where pilots, passengers and/or cargo are
located. Furthermore, Mr. Burnelli was the first to make use
of the aircraft's body/fuselage for lift, and these words have
described his aircraft since their inception.
Remember, it was at NYU where Burnelli wind
tunnel models were actually tested without wings to determine
the lift/drag ratios on the body/fuselage alone. Surely, the
NASA Eggers experiments in the 1950s were simply an extension,
or re-creation, of the much earlier Burnelli examinations at
NYU. After all, the full documentation of the NYU and NACA
wind-tunnel tests is housed at Langley, a NASA facility. If it
were now claimed that the wind-tunnel reports were unknown,
wouldn't this impute a level of incompetence at NASA and
contradict NASA's touted image of cutting-edge efficiency and
intelligence? I'm sure that, by now, you understand that
criminal politics have been the motivating factor in
preventing Mr. Burnelli and his company from building Burnelli
aircraft and the flying public from benefiting from superior
Burnelli technology.
From what transpired over the past two years,
it appears to me NASA and/or AIAA leadership shifted the focus
of your paper from a technical one to a watered-down
historical overview, thereby forcing an apparently honest
engineer to write an out of perspective paper. Eliminated from
it were the enormous advantages of the Burnelli Lifting-Body
principle of design. Showing aircraft designs with misleading
picture captions, many of them derivatives of Vincent
Burnelli's original 1940s design technology without
attribution, serves only to obscure the truth.
The B-2 and the BWB are perfect examples of
just how the Pentagon and NASA fund industry to steal Burnelli
patent, proprietary and intellectual property rights. This
theft is, of course, but a small part of the numerous crimes
perpetrated by these people / organizations. This doesn't take
into account the tens of thousands of people who have suffered
or died from inferior conventional aircraft design technology,
the thousands of airmen who died in miscellaneous wars over
the last six decades and the billions (trillions?) of dollars
wasted on obsolete technology during the same period.
By
now, you must realize the truly subtle way in which the
politicized (not to say, corrupt) NASA (NACA beforehand)
leadership has played a despicable, major role in the Burnelli
conspiracy over the past six decades. Most NASA employees have
been manipulated and forced to become unwitting or, at least,
unwilling collaborators in the practice of ignoring truth and
the defrauding of the American people and the flying public of
enormous public funds and precious lives.
I am truly sorry that you were influenced to
do a political story rather than a truly scientific paper. I
can well imagine that the political story must be far less
interesting for you to do than a well-researched scientific
one. Nevertheless, I must thank you for having, for the first
time in NASA history, recognized in writing, albeit in a
reduced measure, Mr. Burnelli and his design principle. It is
a small step, but each step counts.
I hope you will be permitted to continue your
Burnelli investigation, and that you will always remember Igor
Sikorsky's words, "In Science, truth is not optional."
With best wishes,
Sincerely,
THE BURNELLI COMPANY, INC.
[signed]
Chalmers H. Goodlin
Chairman & CEO
Enclosures
