Mr. Peter Pae
c/o Los Angeles Times
202 West First Street
Los Angeles CA 90012

February 12, 2001

Dear Mr. Pae,

With regard to your article in the Los Angeles Times (2/9/01) on the Boeing BWB, the Burnelli Company, Inc. has documented evidence that your article is untruthful and not supported by the facts.

1. The Boeing BWB lifting body design was invented and reduced to practice by Vincent Justus Burnelli in 1921 with his RB-1 aircraft.

2. Jack Northrop was not the pioneer in the lifting body development. Mr. Burnelli had built and flown four lifting body airplanes before Mr. Northrop copied the Burnelli configuration in his first attempt at a flying wing airplane in 1929.

3. The Northrop B-2 is not a derivative of Northrop's B-49 technology but a copy of Mr. Burnelli's 1940's technology, likewise the Boeing BWB, right down to the engine installation (Burnelli U.S. Patent No. 2,586,299, filed Sept. 11, 1945).

In 1939, Dr. Alexander Klemin, Dean of the Guggenheim School of Aeronautics at New York University, wrote:

"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."

This statement was signed by Dr. Klemin, a number of noted pilots, and the wind

tunnel engineers from both NYU and NACA (now NASA).

On September 19, 1939, General H. H. Arnold, Chief of the U.S. Air Forces, highly recommended Burnelli planes to the Secretary of War and expanded on the many superior operational and economic features. Regarding Burnelli safety aspects, he wrote:

"The [Burnelli] design embodies extremely good factors of safety--considerably higher than the streamlined fuselage type." General Arnold ended his glowing recommendation thusly; "In my opinion it is essential, in the interest of national defense, that this procurement [Burnelli] be authorized." (emphasis added)

Burnelli refused to sell his patents to certain interests, so a contrived Army Air Corps Board of Review was held in 1941. It issued a fraudulent report with technical falsifications, which concluded thusly:

"The Committee recommends that the Air Corps inform both the Central Aircraft Corporation and V. J. Burnelli Airplanes, Inc., and any other concern which may later possibly become interested in the Burnelli 'lifting fuselage', that this design is of no interest to the Air Corps, and that for this reason no further correspondence, consultations, or reviewing of data embodying this design will ever again be considered by the Air Corps or the Materiel Division."

From the existing evidence, the Committee's conclusion was obviously politically motivated, particularly when one considers that the key person involved was none other than General Benny Meyers, who, postwar, went to jail for aircraft procurement fraud.

This obvious, criminal document has been widely disseminated and upheld by the Department of Defense to the present date, clearly for the purpose of keeping the Burnelli Company financially prostrate. Despite repeated requests and demands by the Burnelli Company for its retraction, the Department of Defense has consistently refused. At the same time, we have seen the Department of Defense and NASA funding Burnelli competitors to steal Burnelli patent, proprietary and intellectual property rights.

No matter how this scenario is viewed, it boils down to being the greatest scientific fraud of the 20^th century. America and the travelling public have been denied the full benefits of the superior, safer Burnelli technology for the past 60 years. The intervention of evil politics resulted in many thousands of unnecessary deaths, both military and civil, and the waste of trillions of taxpayer dollars due to the imposition of dangerous, inefficient and fundamentally flawed conventional aircraft.

We trust that you will publish a correction to the outrageous misrepresentation of the truth, posed in your subject Los Angeles Times article.

As we are based in Coral Gables, we sent a similar letter to the Miami Herald, copy attached. Rather complete information is available at www.aircrash.org

Thank you.

Sincerely,

The Burnelli Company, Inc.
www.burnelli.com

[signed]

Chalmers H. Goodlin
Chairman & CEO

ENCLOSURES

• 1939 - Statement made by Dr. Alexander Klemin, Dean of Aeronautical Engineering at Guggenheim Institute, New York University, and signed by him and a group of outstanding pilots and wind-tunnel engineers from NYU and NACA.

• 1939 - Copy of a letter, prepared by officers of Engineering Division at Washington, for signature of General H. H. Arnold to Secretary of War.

• 1941 - Page 5 from the notorious 1941 Proceedings of a Board of Review report.

• 1965 - Letter from Jean Roche, Chief of Airplane Design of Army Air Corps/USAF (for 43 years), to C. H. Goodlin, dated June 10, 1965.

• 1998 - The AIAA Paper # 98-0760 - "Stall Resistance Features of Lifting Body Airplane Configurations" -- Presented at the 36^th Aerospace Sciences Meeting on January 12-15, 1998, Reno, Nevada.

• 2001 - The AIAA Paper # 2001-0311 - "Flying Wings/Flying Fuselages" -- Presented at the 39^th Aerospace Sciences Meeting on January 8-11, 2001, Reno, Nevada.
• Copy of an e-mail of 24 February 1999 to www.aircrash.org from NASA's Mr. Richard M. Wood, one of the authors of the above Paper.

• Comparison of the 1951 Burnelli model with the 1995 McDonnell Douglas Megaplane, as shown on the Popular Science cover
• The origin of the Boeing BWB