The 1935 Do 18 was originally produced as a transatlantic mail-carrying flying-boat and used on the South Atlantic service of Deutsche Luft-Hansa. Evolved as a civil and military successor to the Dornier Wal, the first of five Do 18 prototypes (registered D AHIS) flew on March 15, 1935, powered by two 540 hp Junkers Jumo 5 engines. These five prototypes were delivered to Deutsche Luft¬hansa. It was available in two forms as the Do 18E and Do 18F, with an AUW of 10,000kg and 11,000kg and with larger wings. A total of about 160 was eventually built during 1936 40, the major Luftwaffe versions being the Do 18D (about 75 built) and Do 18G and H (71 built).
The Do 18D 1, D 2 and D 3 differed in equipment only and were delivered from mid¬-1936. By the autumn of 1939 they equipped single Staffeln of five Kustenfliegergruppen (coastal aviation groups). Powered by 600 hp Jumo 205C engines, they were only lightly armed with single bow and dorsal 7.9 mm (0.311 in) MG 15 machine guns, and could carry two 50 kg (110 lb) bombs beneath the starboard wing. Do 18Ds took part in many early wartime campaigns, among them Poland, Norway and the Battle of Britain.
On 27 March 1938 a Do.18 catapulted from the ship Westfalen, anchored off the English coast, and flew 5245 miles / 8440 km non-stop to Caravelas, Brazil, to set a new endurance record for seaplanes.
The Do 18G-1, which entered service from mid 1939, had 880 hp Jumo 205D engines, a 13 mm (0.51 in) MG 131 in the bow, a 20 mm (0.79 in) MG 151 in a power operated dorsal turret, and provision for rocket assisted takeoff.
On Sunday 8 October 1939: During a patrol flight over the North Sea, a Lockheed Hudson coastal reconnaissance plane of 224 Sqn became the first English aircraft to shoot down a German plane, a Dornier Do.18 flying boat.
The Do 18H 1 was a six seat unarmed trainer version. Both the Do 18D and the Do 18G had been withdrawn from first line service by autumn 1941, but some G 1s were converted to Do 18N 1s for air/sea rescue duties. One Do 18 was redesignated Do 18L when its two 447kW Junkers Jumo 205 were replaced by 671kW BMW 132N. Do 18 were also operated as reconnaissance and search-and-rescue aircraft by the Luftwaffe, more than 70 being built for this purpose, plus a number of Do 18H trainers.
Do-18E Engines: 2 x Jumo 205, 440kW Max take-off weight: 10000 kg / 22046 lb Empty weight: 6260 kg / 13801 lb Wingspan: 23.7 m / 77 ft 9 in Length: 19.3 m / 63 ft 4 in Height: 5.4 m / 17 ft 9 in Wing area: 98.0 sq.m / 1054.86 sq ft Max. Speed: 260 km/h / 162 mph Cruise speed: 240 km/h / 149 mph Ceiling: 4200 m / 13800 ft Range w/max.fuel: 5100 km / 3169 miles Range w/max.payload: 2600 km / 1616 miles Crew: 4
Do 18G-1 Span: 23.70 m (77 ft 9 in) Length 19.25 m (63 ft 2 in) Gross weight: 10759 kg (23719 lb) Maximum speed: 267 km/h (166mph)
With the Do.14, Dornier used basic the formula of their successful “Wal” series to build a “cleaner” and more modern seaplane in 1936. Apart of its more aerodynamic shape the main characteristic of the Do.14 was its engine installation. Instead of the twin engined tandem layout above its wing, Dornier placed the two engines inside the fuselage. Those engines were situated facing each other and connected to a gearbox that drove the pusher propeller through a vertical shaft. The aircraft flew without any serious problems, yet only one was built, Technology advances had made this engine formula obsolete.
In 1920 Dornier produced the first Delphin commercial flying-boat. It was based upon substantially the same design as the Libelle. The first versions, the L.1 and L.1a, were each produced with a high open pilot’s cockpit aft of the 138kW BMW IlIa or 134kW BMW III engine, but the later L.2 and L.3 versions had seating for two in front of the passenger cabin, separated by a bulkhead. Power for these versions was provided by a 186.3kW BMW IV or 194kW Rolls-Royce Falcon III and a 447kW BMW VI engine respectively. The Delphin L.2 accommodated up to seven passengers (one next to pilot). The L.3 could carry up to 13 and was built in Switzerland by the Aktiengesellschaft fur Dornier-Flugzeuge at Altenrhein for over inland water and coastal services.
Engine: 1 x BMW IIIa, 136kW Max take-off weight: 2200 kg / 4850 lb Empty weight: 600 kg / 1323 lb Wingspan: 17.0 m / 55 ft 9 in Length: 11.5 m / 37 ft 9 in Height: 3.1 m / 10 ft 2 in Wing area: 50.0 sq.m / 538.20 sq ft Max. speed: 150 km/h / 93 mph Cruise speed: 125 km/h / 78 mph Ceiling: 4000 m / 13100 ft Range w/max.fuel: 380 km / 236 miles Crew: 1 Passengers: 5
The Libelle is a small flying boat of 1922. They were sold in Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and the Fiji.
Dornier Libelle II Length : 24.606 ft / 7.5 m Height : 7.874 ft / 2.4 m Wingspan : 32.152 ft / 9.8 m Max. speed : 78 kts / 145 km/h Service ceiling : 6562 ft / 2000 m Engine : Cirrus III 4-Cyl, 79 hp Crew : 1+2
First conceived by Dr. Claudius Dornier in 1924, planning started in late 1925 and after over 240,000 work hours it was completed in June 1929. The Dornier Do X weighed 62 tonnes (61 tons) loaded, spanned 48 m (157 ft), had three decks, carry 100 passengers, and was powered by 12 Siemens built Bristol Jupiter radial engines of 550 hp mounted in tandem pairs atop a forest of struts above its wing. The three decks included a lounge, smoking room, bathroom, kitchen and dining room as well as individual sleeping cabins. Fully loaded, the maximum speed was only 160km/h.
The luxurious passenger accommodation approached the standards of transatlantic liners. On the main deck was a smoking room with its own wet bar, a dining salon, and seating for the 66 passengers which could also be converted to sleeping berths for night flights. Aft of the passenger spaces was an all-electric galley, lavatories, and cargo hold. The cockpit, navigational office, engine control and radio rooms were on the upper deck. The lower deck held fuel tanks and nine watertight compartments, only seven of which were needed to provide full flotation.
The Do X was financed by the German Transport Ministry and built in a specially designed plant at Altenrhein on the Swiss portion of Lake Constance. This, in order to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles which forbade any aircraft exceeding set speed and range limits to be built in Germany after World War I. The Dornier Do X was the largest, heaviest, and most powerful flying boat in the world when it was produced in 1929.
The Do X was built in Switzerland by Aktiengesellschaft fur Dornier-Flugzeuge at Altenrhein, was launched on 12 July 1929, and first flew off the Bodensee on 25 July 1929 with a crew of 14. The Do X is a semi-cantilever monoplane, an all-duralumin hull, with wings composed of a steel-reinforced duralumin framework covered in heavy linen fabric, covered with aluminum paint.
It was initially powered by twelve 391 kW (524 hp) Siemens-built Bristol Jupiter radial engines (six tractor propellers and six pushers), mounted in six tower nacelles on the wing. The nacelles are joined by an auxiliary wing whose purpose was to stabilize the mountings. The air-cooled Jupiter engines were prone to overheating and proved to only be able to lift the Do X to an altitude of 425 m (1,400 ft). The engines were supervised by an engineer, who also controlled the throttle. The pilot would ask the engineer to adjust the power, in a manner similar to that used on maritime vessels.
The engineer in the machine centre operated the throttles of the 12 engines
On its 70th test flight on 21 October 1929 there were 169 souls on board; 150 passengers (mostly production workers and their families, and a few journalists), 10 aircrew and 9 “stowaways”, who did not hold tickets. The flight broke the then world record for the number of persons carried on a single flight, a record that was not broken for another 20 years. After a takeoff run of 50 seconds the Do X slowly climbed to an altitude of only 200 m (650 ft). As a result of the ship’s size, passengers were asked to crowd together on one side or the other to help make turns. It flew for 40 minutes (Flug Revue claims it was the 42nd flight and lasted 53 minutes, and historical film shows “fliegt mit 170 personen”) at a maximum speed of 170 km/h (105 mph) before finally landing on Lake Constance.
But the Dornier was barely able to climb above 400 m (1312 ft) because of the poor cooling of the rear-mounted sextet of Jupiters, which sharply reduced their power output.
After completing 103 flights in 1930, the Do X was refitted with 455 kW (610 hp) Curtiss Conqueror water-cooled 12-cylinder inline engines. Only then was it able to reach the altitude of 490 m (1,610 ft) necessary to cross the Atlantic. Dr. Dornier designed the flying boat to carry 66 passengers long distance or 100 on shorter flights.
During a visit to England in 1930 it was piloted for 10 minutes by the Prince of Wales.
To introduce the airliner to the potential United States market the Do X took off from Friedrichshafen, Germany on 3 November 1930, under the command of Friedrich Christiansen for a transatlantic test flight to New York. The route took the Do X to the Netherlands, England, France, Spain, and Portugal. The journey was interrupted at Lisbon on 29 November, when a tarpaulin made contact with a hot exhaust pipe and started a fire that consumed most of the port side wing.
After sitting in Lisbon harbor for six weeks while new parts were fabricated and the damage repaired, the flying boat continued along the Western coast of Africa and by 5 June 1931 had reached the Capverdian Islands. Taking off from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands in high seas the hull took such a beating that another three months were wasted for repairs. Eventually it reached Natal, Brazil after crossing the Atlantic at an altitude of 6 m (20 ft) and with half her crew of 19 and much of her cargo of mail left be¬hind to save weight.
The new engines, while giving more power than the radials, burned fuel at the rate of 1820 litres (400 Imperial gallons) per hour, which meant that every non essential item had to be sacrificed. At length, on 27 August 1931, the Do X came to New York’s Battery to a ticker tape welcome, ten months after setting out from Germany.
Dornier Do X
The Do X and crew spent the next nine months there as its engines were overhauled, and thousands of sightseers made the trip to Glenn Curtiss Airport (now LaGuardia Airport) to tour the leviathan of the air. The economic effects of the Great Depression dashed Dornier’s marketing plans for the Do X, however, and it departed from New York on May 21, 1932 via Newfoundland and the Azores to Müggelsee, Berlin where it arrived on 24 May and was met by a cheering crowd of 200,000.
Two further Do Xs, the Umberto Maddalena and Alessandro Guidoni, were built for the Italian air force.
Germany’s original Do X was turned over to Deutsche Luft Hansa, the national airline at that time, after the financially strapped Dornier Company could no longer operate it. After a successful 1932 tour of German coastal cities, Luft Hansa planned a Do X flight to Vienna, Budapest, and Istanbul for 1933. The voyage ended after nine days when the flying boat’s tail section tore off during a botched, over-steep landing on a reservoir lake near the city of Passau. While the fiasco was successfully covered up and the Do X was repaired, it was then flown to Berlin, where it became the centerpiece of Germany’s new aviation museum Deutsche Luftfahrt-Sammlung at Lehrter Bahnhof, opened in 1936.
The Do X remained an exhibit until it was destroyed in an RAF air raid during World War II on the night of 23-24 November 1943, by 383 aircraft – 365 Lancasters, 10 Halifaxes, and 8 Mosquitos. Fragments of the torn off tail section are on display at the Dornier Museum in Friedrichshafen. While never a commercial success, the Dornier Do X was the largest heavier-than-air aircraft of its time, a pioneer in demonstrating the potential of an international passenger air service. A successor, the Do-XX, was envisioned by Dornier, but never advanced beyond the design study stage.
Do XIa Data from Flight 1930 Length: 40.1 m (131 ft 4 in) Wingspan: 48 m (157 ft 5 in) Height: 10.25 m (33 ft 7 in) Wing area: 450 m² (4,844 ft²) Empty weight: 28,250 kg (62,280 lb) Max. takeoff weight: 56,000 kg (123,460 lb) Engines: 12 × Curtiss Conqueror, 455 kW (610 hp) Maximum speed: 211 km/h (131 mph) Cruise speed: 175 km/h (109 mph) Range w/max.fuel: 3600 km / 2237 miles Range w/max.payload: 1100 km / 684 miles Ceiling: 420 m / 1400 ft Wing loading: 19.3 lb/sq ft (at 46 tons weight) Crew: 10-14 Capacity: 66-100 passengers
In 1926 Dornier located his main centre of activities across Lake Constance at Altenrhein, Switzerland, and began the development of the Superwal, the four engine DoR with two passenger cabins for 20 passengers, and then the gigantic 12 engine DoX, intended for transatlantic travel.
A 1925 Japanese collection of official papers, which was sent to Kawasaki, mentions a Do. Q aircraft as a submarine-carried aircraft.
The first paragraph reads, roughly:
“To their request, regarding the work progress of the Do. Q – (machine with Siemens motor), [would] like to share with them [Kawasaki?] that we will be expecting such a motor from the delivery company and then try to make it [Do. Q]. We assume that with this engine, a better performance of the Do. Q will be achieved.”
The second paragraph:
“[As far as] flying the Do. Q, built [using the] Le Rhone engine is concerned, it was executed some time before another flight with the maximum payload. The engine of the [Do. Q] started effortlessly in 20 seconds, however, the speed [was] very low, which was detected by [comparison to the Dragonfly (Do. A)] and it found that the rate [speed?] of the Do. Q was [inferior] to the Dragonfly. Also on the water, the rotating mass of the motor [required] that the turn down the Le Rhone engine [to] only 800 [Touren?] and the pilot is forced to temporarily turn off the ignition to the engine. The consequences of this is that the boat [was] pretty jerky and restless and rolls up after turning the ignition [on]. The flight tests were, therefore, with the Do. Q [using the] Le Rhone.”
Third paragraph:
“So we must ask them [Kawasaki?] to be patient in this affair, until we try our exports [engines] with [the] built-in Siemens motor [as we regret that opposition to ] the Le Rhone engine [has] stiffened. It will be understandable to them that the Do. Q [will] only achieve good results and for this reason [we must]refrain from [using] the Le Rhone engine.
The Wal all-metal flying-boat was a direct development of the Gs I of 1919 and the uncompleted Gs II. The Wal had a two-step hull, strut-braced untapered parasol wing, sponsons, single fin and rudder, and two engines in tandem above the centre section. The prototype flew on 6 November 1922. Because of the Allied ban on German construction of this class of aeroplane, production was undertaken by GMASA in Italy with the first aircraft completed in 1923.
LZ127 Graf Zeppelin & Dornier Wal. 1928
Passenger, mail-carrier and military versions were produced with a wide range of engines of 223.6-559kW. There were four different wing spans and the maximum weight grew from about 4,000kg to 10,000kg. Wals were also built by Piaggio and in Japan, the Netherlands and Spain, and later in Germany. About 300 were built before production ceased in the mid-1930s.
Wals pioneered air services in South America, were widely used in the Mediterranean (with eight-ten seats) and, operating from depot ships, established Luft-Hansa’s South Atlantic mail services.
To carry mail over the Berlin to Rio de Janeiro Atlantic route, Lufthansa converted the 5400 tonne Wesfalen cargo vessel into a floating airbase. The flying boat, usually a Do.J, would land near the ship, and then be hauled by a crane up a ‘dragsail’, a semi-rigid blanket that stretched into the water over the stern to act as a slipway. The Wal was then moved to the bow, from where it was launched into the air by a compressed air catapult. The complete system was first tested in June 1933, 940 miles / 1500 km off the Gambian coast.
Engines: 2 x RR 1928, 265kW Max take-off weight: 4100 kg / 9039 lb Empty weight: 2720 kg / 5997 lb Wingspan: 26.5 m / 86 ft 11 in Length: 16.2 m / 53 ft 2 in Height: 4.7 m / 15 ft 5 in Wing area: 96.0 sq.m / 1033.33 sq ft Max. speed: 180 km/h / 112 mph Cruise speed: 150 km/h / 93 mph Ceiling: 3500 m / 11500 ft Range w/max.fuel: 3600 km / 2237 miles Crew: 2-4 Passengers: 10-12
Wal Engine : 2 x BMW VI, 690 hp Length : 60.039 ft / 18.3 m Height : 17.552 ft / 5.35 m Wingspan : 76.115 ft / 23.2 m Wing area : 1033.344 sq.ft / 96.0 sq.m Max take off weight : 17640.0 lb / 8000.0 kg Weight empty : 10363.5 lb / 4700.0 kg Max. speed : 124 kts / 230 km/h Landing speed : 57 kts / 105 km/h Cruising speed : 108 kts / 200 km/h Initial climb rate : 590.55 ft/min / 3.0 m/s Service ceiling : 9843 ft / 3000 m Wing load : 17.02 lb/sq.ft / 83.0 kg/sq.m Range : 1026 nm / 1900 km Crew : 4 Armament : 2x MG15
Engine: 4 x MB IVa, 190kW Take-off weight: 10500 kg / 23149 lb Empty weight: 3500 kg / 7716 lb Wingspan: 37.0 m / 121 ft 5 in Length: 22.3 m / 73 ft 2 in Height: 8.6 m / 28 ft 3 in Wing area: 226.0 sq.m / 2432.64 sq ft Max. Speed: 145 km/h / 90 mph Ceiling: 2800 m / 9200 ft Range w/max.fuel: 1300 km / 808 miles Crew: 4-5
The two improved GsIIs under construction at Seemoos fell foul of the Allied Commission and were destroyed in 1919. Dornier commissioned the firm’s Italian subsidiary to continue development and construction of the forbidden type. The GsII, the famous Wal, which flew in 1922, was built under license in Japan, Netherlands, and Spain and would evolve through the 1920s and into the 1930s. Between the first production Wal of 1923 and the military type of 1932, the airplane’s wingspan increased greatly, its engine power more than doubled, and its loaded weight rose from 8820 to 22000 pounds. It was used for civilian mail service and long range reconnaissance, and the commercial and military models differed little.
Engine: 2 x MB IVa, 190kW Take-off weight: 4315 kg / 9513 lb Empty weight: 1200 kg / 2646 lb Wingspan: 21.0 m / 68 ft 11 in Length: 15.3 m / 50 ft 2 in Height: 4.7 m / 15 ft 5 in Wing area: 80.0 sq.m / 861.11 sq ft Max. Speed: 170 km/h / 106 mph Cruise speed: 140 km/h / 87 mph Ceiling: 4250 m / 13950 ft Range w/max.fuel: 600 km / 373 miles Crew: 2 Passengers: 6
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