AEROPLANE SEPTEMBER 2017 http://www.aeroplanemonthly.com 15BURNELLI ADVANCING
RESTORATION of the world’s only Burnelli
CBY-3 Loadmaster is progressing well with a
group of volunteers at the New England Air
Museum, 53 years after the unorthodox ‘lifting
body’ transport fi rst arrived at the museum’s
Windsor Locks site in Connecticut. Built by
Canadian Car and Foundry in 1944 at Fort
William, Québec, the machine, CF-BEL-X, was
displayed outdoors from 1964 until being
moved into the restoration workshop in 2013.
The team, led by restoration co-ordinator Bob
Vozzola, has rid the huge, bridge-like fuselage
structure of corrosion suffered during that
protracted exposure to the elements. Work to
fi t out the interior is challenging, with many
parts absent: the machine had 18 hatches and
access doors internally, several of which are
missing and being remanufactured. All the
windows had been smashed and are being
remade. The two Pratt & Whitney R-
engines and cowlings have been lost, but the
museum has a pair of ’2600s from a B-25 that
have been restored and are now in storage. The
aircraft had suffered rear fuselage damage
around the tailwheel, where structural and skin
repairs have been carried out, and major
structural repairs have been completed on the
control surfaces.
The machine was the last aircraft penned by
Vincent Burnelli, a Texan whose fi rst ‘liftingbody’ design, the RB-1 biplane freighter, fl ew in- The CBY-3, which could accommodate 24
passengers, was intended for bush fl ying
operations in northern Canada. Despite
garnering great praise in the aviation press and
within the industry, the prototype remained the
sole example built. After being registered
N17N it was to earn its living fl ying passengers
and freight in Canada and South America,
eventually fi nishing its career at Baltimore
Airport, Maryland, where it ended up being
dumped.
P-40 PROGRESSING AT CURTISS MUSEUM
ALTHOUGH the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in
Hammondsport, New York State is
predominantly concerned with aircraft designed
by the company founder, during August 2011 a
Curtiss P-40N restoration project arrived from
Iowa on a truck provided by local aviation parts
manufacturer Mercury Aircraft.
The project is based on two P-40s that were
recovered from a swamp in Florida, into which
they had crashed following a mid-air collision in- When completed — it is hoped in about
two years’ time — the P-40 will be displayed in
a fl ight attitude. Visitors will be permitted to sit
in the cockpit and work the controls for fl aps,
undercarriage, lights, and various other systems.
One of the rebuilt Allison V-1710 engines from
the Florida recovery will be reinstalled in the
aircraft.
Despite the fact that P-40s were built 100 miles
west of Hammondsport in Buffalo, Mercury
Aircraft manufactured complete P-40 and SB2C
Helldiver tail assemblies and fuel tanks during the
war years. A 1931 Mercury S-1 monoplane racer
is on show in the main museum building,
alongside more than a dozen genuine and
reproduction Curtiss aircraft dating from 1908-31.PROJECT UPDATEPROJECT UPDATE
The composite P-40M in the workshop at
Hammondsport in late July. STEFAN SCHMOLLABOVE: The
fuselage of the
sole Burnelli
CBY-3 in the New England Air
Museum workshops in mid-July. STEFAN SCHMOLL
RIGHT: The Loadmaster in service in South America
during the 1950s.Services Bomb Disposal
School at Broadbridge Heath
near Horsham, Sussex. In 1967
it was transferred to a
territorial bomb disposal unit
at Fort Clarence, Rochester,
where it was covered in thick
black paint and left outside.
When the Lashenden Air
Warfare Museum opened in
1970 a team visited Fort
Clarence to acquire some
bombs for display, and was
told that the Reichenberg was
due to be scrapped. After
acquiring the machine,
museum volunteers carried out
a cosmetic restoration to
prevent any further
deterioration.
During November 2007 the
machine was moved to
Geisenhausen near Munich,
where the restoration was
carried out by V1 specialist
Alexander Kuncze and his
team at the Auktionshaus für
historische Technik. Work
included replacement of the
nose cone, as the one
previously fi tted was not the
original. Some of the skinning
on the rear fuselage needed
replacing, the wing main spar
was replaced, and the wings
re-covered in the correct
grade of plywood. The cockpit
has been fully fi tted out with
original working period
instruments, electrical fi ttings
and so forth.
The Fi 103R-4 has been
fi nished as it was when
displayed at Farnborough in
1945, and is listed as a
‘benchmark’ aircraft in the UK’s
National Historic Aircraft
Register as being of world,
national and technical
signifi cance.Reichenberg hangar completed
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