Found a bit more info on the aircraft
During the late 1920s and 1930s American aircraft designer Vincent Burnelli had conceived and built a series of aircraft that sought to combine the attributes of a true "flying wing" with the practicalities of stability and size. These culminated in the UB-14 which first flew in 1934. A fuselage of wing profile provided a spacious and strong passenger cabin. A twin boom tail provided the lateral stability impossible in true flying wing designs until the use of "fly-by-wire" technology. Closely grouped twin engines minimized asymmetric handing problems. The first prototype crashed in spectacular fashion but the passenger cabin escaped with little damage, vindicating the designers claims for the inherent safety of the design. A second prototype was soon flying (the UB-14B) and attracted world-wide interest.
Burnelli never succeeded in getting his brainchild into production in the USA. However he had little problem attracting interest in other countries. Unfortunately in each case he ended up negotiating license production with companies that wanted to break into the aviation marketplace rather than ones already established in it. A deal with the Canadian Can-Car company led to only a single aircraft that only flew in 1945, while production in Holland fell through altogether. In the UK the "Scottish Aircraft & Engineering Company" was formed to build the UB-14 with British Rolls-Royce Kestrel engines. At the time there was huge unemployment in Scotland in the aftermath of the economic depression and there were various schemes to subsidize the setting up of factories in Scotland, especially in the Glasgow area (Blackburn was one company that took advantage of this, setting up a flying-boat factory at Dumbarton). It seems the Scottish Aircraft & Engineering Company was set up to take advantage of these schemes, although the only addresses listed in its many press advertisements were in London. These press adverts were prodigious and a lot of interest was whipped up for their version of the Burnelli which they called "The Clyde Clipper", no doubt a reference to where they hoped to produce the aircraft (there was also to be a cargo-carrying version to be called the "Clyde Freighter"). With war clouds looming they also advertised a "Burnelli Bomber" version. All of this came to naught- the company collapsed with only a wooden mock-up of the Clyde-Clipper to show for its efforts.
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Topic: Quest: Guess what is depicted here (Read 1000608 times)
