Скачать или смотреть DORNIER DO X, The Flying Boat

The Dornier Do X, or as the Germans call it “Der Flugschiff '' was the largest and heaviest flying boat of its time. It was produced by the Dornier Company of Germany in 1929. Although initially the public showed great interest in the airplane, because of few non-fatal crashes, it was commercially not successful and only three of them were produced. The first one built and operated by Dornier was called Dornier Do X. The other two were ordered by Italy: The Do X2, named Umberto Maddelena registered as I-REDI and Do X3 ith thw name Alessandro Guidoni registered as I-ABBN.

Dornier DO X was launched for a test flight for the first time with a crew of 14 people onboard on July 12, 1929. To satisfy skeptics about ıts commercial feasibility, on its 70th test flight the plane had 169 people on board, mostly production workers and families, journalists and 10 aircrew members. The flight set a record for the number of people on a single flight which was not broken for the next 20 years.

Hoping to utilize the United States commercial market the Do X started a transatlantic test flight from Friedrichshafen Germany on November 30, 1930 to New York. The itinerary in Europe included stops in Holland, England, France, Spain and Portugal. In Portugal a tarpaulin made contact wıth an exhaust pipe and most of the left wing was burned out. After 6 weeks of delay the plane was repaired and took off to West Africa. After several mishaps and delays the Do X landed at Cape Verde on June 5, 1931. From there it took off flying over the Atlantic and landed in Natal Brazil.
Finally 10 months after departing from Friedrichshafen on August 27,1931 the Do X reached New York where it sayed for the next nine months making several trips with sightseers to the Glenn Curtis Airport or as we know it today : The La Guardia. Unfortunately the marketing plans for the Dornier did not realize partly because of the great depression and it departed New York on May 21, 1932 for the flight back home via Newfoundland and the Azores. 3 Days later the Do X landed in Berlin and was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of 200 000 people.
Soon after arriving in Berlin in 1932 the DoX was turned to LuftHansa, the flag carrier airline of Germany. LuftHansa planned commercial flights of the Do X to Vienna, Budapest and Istanbul in 1933. But because of an overly steep landing accident by the reservoir lake near Passau the plane's tail section broke and the journey came to an end. From there Do X was flown back to Lake Constance and finally to Berlin where it was put on display at the Hauptbahnhof Aviation Museum. On November 24, 1943, during an air raid by the British Royal Air Force the Do X exhibit was completely destroyed. Today pieces of its tail section are displayed at the Dornier Museum in Friedrichshafen.
In an accident similar to Do X1, the Italian Do X 2 was severely damaged one month later and taken off service at Marina di Pisa and broken up for scrap in 1937.

For the full story of "The Postcard and Flying Boat Dornier Do X" checkthe article on my web site;
http://www.istanbullite.com/capsineng...
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Thank you forThank you for Steve de Roeck for information about Dornier do Xand "Rare Historical Photos" for the photos.