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| Do JWal | |
|---|---|
 A Spanish Dornier Do J "Plus Ultra" in Luján Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina. | |
| General information | |
| Type | Flying boat |
| Manufacturer | Dornier Flugzeugwerke |
| Primary user | Spain |
| Number built | >250 |
| History | |
| Introduction date | 1923 |
| First flight | 6 November 1922 |
| Retired | 1950 |
TheDornier Do JWal ("whale") is a twin-engine Germanflying boat of the 1920s designed byDornier Flugzeugwerke. The Do J was designated theDo 16 by theReich Air Ministry (RLM) under itsaircraft designation system of 1933.
The Do J had a high-mountedstrut-bracedparasol wing with twopiston engines mounted in tandem in a centralnacelle above the wing; one engine drove atractor and the other drove apusher propeller. The hull made use ofClaudius Dornier's patentedsponsons on the hull's sides, first pioneered with the earlier, Dornier-designedZeppelin-Lindau Rs.IV flying boat late in World War I.[1][2] The Do J made its maiden flight on 6 November 1922. The flight, as well as most production until 1932,took place in Italy because of the restrictions on aviation in Germany after World War I under theterms of the Treaty of Versailles. Dornier began to produce theWal in Germany in 1931; production went on until 1936.
In the military version (Militärwal in German),[3] a crew of two to four rode in an opencockpit near the nose of the hull. There was one machine gun position in the bow in front of the cockpit and one or two amidships. Beginning with Spain, military versions were delivered to Argentina, Chile and the Netherlands for use in their colonies; examples were also sent to Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and to the end of production Italy and Germany. The main military users, Spain and the Netherlands, manufactured their own versions under licence. Several countries, notably Italy, Norway, Portugal, Uruguay and Germany, employed theWal for military tasks.
The civil version (Kabinenwal orVerkehrswal)[3] had acabin in the nose, offering space for up to 12 passengers, while the open cockpit was moved further aft. Main users of this version were Germany, Italy, Brazil and Colombia.
The Do J was first powered by two 265 kW (355 hp)Rolls-Royce Eagle IX engines. Later versions used nearly every available engine on the market from makers likeHispano-Suiza,Napier & Son,Lorraine-Dietrich,BMW, and even the US-builtLiberty V-12 engine. The10 to-Wal used byDeutsche Lufthansa for their mail service across the South Atlantic from 1934 to 1938 had a range of 3,600 km (2,200 mi), and a ceiling of 3,500 m (11,480 ft).
Over 250Wals were built by CMASA andPiaggio in Italy,CASA in Spain,Kawasaki in Japan,Aviolanda in the Netherlands andDornier in Germany.
Numerous airlines operatedWals on scheduled passenger and mail services with great success. The source Robert L. Gandt, in 1991,[4] (pages 47–48) lists the following carriers: SANA and Aero Espresso of Italy; Aero Lloyd and Deutsche Luft Hansa of Germany; SCADTA of Colombia; Syndicato Condor of Brazil; Nihon Koku Yuso Kaisha of Japan. According toNicolaou, 1996[5] the DornierWal was "easily the greatest commercial success in the history of marine aviation".
TheColombian Air Force usedWals in theColombia–Peru War in 1932–1933.
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TheDornier Do 18 was a completely updated successor to the Wal but shared little more than the general configuration.
The Norwegian polar explorerRoald Amundsen accompanied byLincoln Ellsworth, pilotHjalmar Riiser-Larsen, and three other team members used two Dornierseaplanes in his unsuccessful attempt to reach theNorth Pole in 1925. His two aircraft,N-24 andN-25, landed at 87° 44' north. It was the northernmost latitude reached by any aircraft up to that time. The planes landed a few miles apart without radio contact, yet the crews managed to reunite. One of the aircraft, the N-24, was damaged. Amundsen and his crew worked for over three weeks to prepare an airstrip to take off from the ice. They shoveled 600 tons of ice while consuming only one pound (454 g) of daily food rations. In the end, six crew members were packed into the N-25. Riiser-Larsen took off, and they barely became airborne over the cracking ice. They returned triumphantly after widely being presumed dead.
On 18 August 1930,Wolfgang von Gronau started on a transatlantic flight in the same DornierWal (D-1422) Amundsen had flown, establishing the northern air route over the Atlantic, flying fromSylt (Germany)-Iceland-Greenland-Labrador-New York 4,670 mi (7,520 km)) in 47 flight hours. In 1932 von Gronau flew a DornierWal (D-2053) called the "Grönland Wal" (Greenland Whale) on a round-the-world flight.
In 1926 the captainRamón Franco became a national Spanish hero when he piloted thePlus Ultra on a trans-Atlantic flight, following the route pioneered by Portuguese aviatorsSacadura Cabral andGago Coutinho in thefirst flight across the South Atlantic in 1922. His co-pilot wasJulio Ruiz de Alda Miqueleiz; the other crew members were Teniente de Navio (Navy Lieutenant) Juan Manuel Duran and the mechanic Pablo Rada. ThePlus Ultra departed fromPalos de la Frontera, in theProvince of Huelva, Spain, on 22 January and arrived inBuenos Aires, Argentina, on 26 January. It stopped over atGran Canaria,Cape Verde,Pernambuco,Rio de Janeiro andMontevideo. The 10,270 kilometres (6,380 mi; 5,550 nmi)* journey was completed in 59 hours and 39 minutes.
The event appeared in most major newspapers worldwide, although some of them underlined the fact that the airplane itself, plus the technical expertise were foreign. Throughout the Spanish-speaking world, the Spanish aviators were wildly acclaimed, particularly in Argentina and Spain where thousands gathered atPlaza de Colón inMadrid.
In 1929 Franco attempted another trans-Atlantic flight, this time crashing the airplane in the sea near theAzores. The crew was rescued days later by the aircraft carrierHMSEagle of the BritishRoyal Navy.
The Portuguese military aviator majorSarmento de Beires and his crew (captain Jorge de Castilho as navigator and lieutenant Manuel Gouveia as flight engineer) made the first aerial crossing of theAtlantic Ocean by night in a Dornier J namedArgos. The crossing was made on the night of the 16 to 17 March 1927, from theBijagós Archipelago inPortuguese Guinea toFernando de Noronha island inBrazil.
Two DornierWals (D-ALOXPassat and D-AKERBoreas) also played an important role in theThird German Antarctic Expedition of 1939.
The biggest and last versions of theWal, the eight and ten tonne variants (both versions also known asKatapultwal[3] ), were operated byLufthansa on their South Atlantic airmail service from Stuttgart, Germany to Natal, Brazil.[6] On route proving flights in 1933, and a scheduled service beginning in February 1934,Wals flew the trans-ocean stage of the route, betweenBathurst,the Gambia in West Africa andFernando de Noronha, an island group off South America. At first, there was a refueling stop in mid-ocean. The flying boat would land on the open sea, near a converted merchant ship. This vessel was equipped with a "towed sail" onto which the aircraft taxied. From there it was winched aboard by a crane, refueled, and then launched by catapult back into the air. However, landing on the big ocean swells tended to damage the hull of the flying boats, especially the smaller8-tonne Wal. From September 1934 a second merchantman was available, so thatLufthansa now had a support ship at each end of the trans-ocean stage, providing radio navigation signals and catapult launchings. When they did not have to take off from the water under their own power, the flying boats could carry more fuel. Once the incoming mail from Europe had arrived in West Africa (also byWal from the Canary Islands), the support ship would steam out to sea in the direction of South America for 36 hours before using its catapult to launch the airplane. On the return trip aWal would fly the stage from Natal to Fernando de Noronha, and then be carried out to sea overnight. The same airplane was then catapulted off to fly to West Africa the following morning,i.e., after twelve hours travel on the ship. From April 1935 the ships no longer carried the flying boats out to sea. TheWal was launched offshore, and flew the entire distance across the ocean. This cut the time it took for mail to get from Germany to Brazil from four days down to three.
The first ship converted to a mid-Atlantic refueling stop was theSS Westfalen, a freight and passenger liner that became out-dated for carrying mail and passengers shortly after World War I due to its small size and low cruising speed. The second vessel was theMSSchwabenland. In 1936 a new support ship went into service, the MSOstmark, which Lufthansa had purpose-built as a seaplane tender.
Wals made over 300 crossings of the South Atlantic in regular mail service (Gandt, 1991, pages 47–48).[4] The8-tonne Wal was not a success, only two being built. The six10-tonne Wals flew the South Atlantic from 1934 until late 1938, although aircraft of more recent design began replacing them from 1937.
From 1925 the French airlineCompagnie Générale Aéropostale operated an airmail service on much the same route, from France to Brazil. The mail was flown only as far asDakar in Senegal, West Africa, and then shipped across the South Atlantic to Natal aboard converteddestroyers. The ocean crossing alone took five days, the whole trip eight days. From 1930Aéropostale began trying to make the ocean crossing by air, but kept losing planes and crews and suffered from a lack of political support.Air France, of whichAéropostale had become a part, only began operating anall air service between Europe and South America in January 1936,[7] nearly two years afterLufthansa. That the Germans had succeeded in establishing the world's first regular intercontinental airline service before their competition was due, in no small part, to the sturdy and seaworthyWal and its reliable BMW engines.
(This section is based on "Graue & Duggan",[8][page needed] Gandt[4][page needed] and Nicolaou.[5][page needed])
Data from:[9][unreliable source?]
General characteristics
Performance
Related lists
