(Dornier) Do J Wal @·AIRCRAFTUBE

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Dornier Do J "Wal"

The Dornier Do J Wal ("whale") was a twin-engine German flying boat of the 1920s designed by Dornier Flugzeugwerke. The Do J was designated the Do 16 by the Reich Air Ministry (RLM) under its aircraft designation system of 1933.

Design and development

The Do J was a fairly modern (compared to World War I types) flying boat with a high-mounted strut-braced monoplane wing. Two piston engines were mounted in tandem in a nacelle above the wing and in line with the hull; one engine drove a tractor propeller and the other drove a pusher propeller. The Do J made its maiden flight on 6 November 1922. The flight, as well as most of the production until 1932, took place in Italy because of the restrictions on aviation in Germany after World War I under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Dornier started producing the Wal in Germany in 1931, with production lasting to 1936.

In the military version (Militärwal in German), a crew of two to four rode in an open cockpit near the nose of the hull. There were one MG-position in the bow in front of the cockpit and one to two amidships. Beginning with Spain, military versions were delivered to Argentina, Chile, the Netherlands for use in their colonies, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and to the end of the 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, Great Britain and Germany, used the Wal for military raids.

The civil version (Kabinenwal or Verkehrswal) had a cabin 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, 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 like Hispano-Suiza, Napier & Son, Lorraine-Dietrich, BMW, and even the Liberty Engine. The 10 to-Wal used by Deutsche Luft Hansa 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 250 Wals were built by CMASA and Piaggio in Italy, CASA in Spain, Kawasaki in Japan, Aviolanda in the Netherlands, and Dornier in Germany.

Numerous airlines operated Dornier Wals on scheduled passenger and mail services with great success. The source Gandt,1991 (pages 47–48) lists the following carriers: SANA and Aero Espresso of Italy; Aero Lloyd and Deutsche Luft Hansa of Germany; SCADTA of Columbia; Syndicato Condor of Brazil; Nihon Koku Yuso Kaisha of Japan. According to Nicolaou,1996 the Dornier Wal was "easily the greatest commercial success in the history of marine aviation".

The Colombian Air Force used Dornier Wals in the Colombia-Peru War in 1932-1933.

Pioneering flights

The Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen accompanied by Lincoln Ellsworth, pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, and three other team members used two Dornier seaplanes in his unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole in 1925. His two aircraft, N-24 and N-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 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 triumphant when everyone thought they had been lost forever.

On 18 August 1930, Wolfgang von Gronau started on a transatlantic flight in the same Dornier Wal (D-1422) Amundsen had flown, establishing the northern air route over the Atlantic flying Sylt(Germany)-Iceland-Greenland-Labrador-New York (4670 miles) in 47 flight hours. In 1932 Wolfgang von Gronau flew a Dornier Wal (D-2053) called the "Grönland Wal" (Greenland Whale) on a round-the-world flight.

In 1926 Ramón Franco became a national Spanish hero when he piloted the Dornier Plus Ultra on a trans-Atlantic flight. His co-pilot was Julio Ruiz de Alda Miqueleiz; the other crew members were Teniente de Navio (Navy Lieutenant) Juan Manuel Duran and the mechanic Pablo Rada. The Plus Ultra departed from Palos de la Frontera, in Huelva, Spain on 22 January and arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 26 January. It stopped over at Gran Canaria, Cape Verde, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo. The 10,270 km journey was completed in 59 hours and 39 minutes.

The event appeared in most of the major newspapers world wide, though some of them underlining the fact that the airplane itself plus the technical expertise were foreign. Throughout the Spanish-speaking world the Spanish aviators were glamorously acclaimed, particularly in Argentina and Spain where thousands gathered at Plaza de Colón in Madrid. (Wikimedia Commons has media related to Plus Ultra - see below.)

In 1929 Franco attempted another trans-Atlantic flight, this time crashing the airplane to the sea near the Azores. The crew was rescued days later by the aircraft carrier Eagle of the British Royal Navy.

The Portuguese military aviator Sarmento de Beires and his crew made the first night aerial crossing of the South Atlantic in a Dornier J named Argos. The crossing was made on the night of 17 March 1927 from Portuguese Guinea to Brazil.

Two Dornier Wals (D-ALOX Passat and D-AKER Boreas) also played an important role in the Third German Antarctic Expedition of 1939.

South Atlantic air mail

The biggest and last versions of the Wal, the 8-tonne Wal and 10-tonne Wal (both versions also known as Katapultwal ), were operated by Deutsche Luft Hansa on their South Atlantic airmail service from Stuttgart, Germany to Natal, Brazil. On route proving flights in 1933, and scheduled service beginning in February 1934, Wals flew the trans-ocean stage of the route, between Bathurst, the Gambia in West Africa and Fernando de Noronha, an island group off South America. At first, there was a refueling stop in mid ocean. The Wal would land on the open sea, near a converted freight ship. This was equipped with a "towed sail" on to which the flying boat taxied. From there it was winched aboard by a crane, refueled, and then launched by catapult. However, landing on the big ocean swells tended to damage the hull of the flying boats, especially the smaller 8-tonne Wal. From September 1934 a second ship was available, so that Luft Hansa 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. When the incoming mail from Europe arrived in West Africa (by Wal from the Canary Islands), the support ship would chug out to sea in the direction of South America for 36 hours, before launching the airplane with its catapult. On the return trip a Wal would fly the stage from Natal to Fernando de Noronha, and then be carried out to sea over night. 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. The Wal was launched right off shore, 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 days.

The first ship converted to a mid-Atlantic refueling stop was the SS Westfalen, a freight and passenger liner which became out-dated for carrying mail and passengers shortly after World War I due to its small size and low cruising speed. The second conversion was the MS Schwabenland. In 1936 a new support ship went into service, the MS Ostmark, which Luft Hansa 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). The 8-tonne Wal was not a success, only two being built. The six 10-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 airline Compagnie Générale Aéropostale operated an airmail service on much the same route, from France to Brazil. The mail was flown only as far as Dakar in Senegal, West Africa, and then shipped across the South Atlantic to Natal aboard converted destroyers. The ocean crossing alone took five days, the whole trip eight days. From 1930 Aéropostale started trying to make the ocean crossing by air, but kept on losing planes and crews. Air France, which Aéropostale had become a part of, only began operating an all air service between Europe and South America in January 1936, nearly two years after Luft Hansa. That Luft Hansa succeeded in establishing the world's first regular intercontinental airline service where Aéropostale failed was due in no small part to the sturdy and seaworthy Wal and its reliable BMW engines.

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This text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Source : Article Dornier Do J of Wikipedia ( authors )

Specifications (Do J Wal RR Eagle engines)

  • Crew : 3.
  • Capacity : 8-10 passengers.
  • Length : 17.25 m (56 ft 7 in).
  • Height : 5.2 m (17 ft).
  • Wingspan : 22 m (72 ft 2 in).
  • Wing area : 96 m² (1,030 sq ft).
  • Empty weight : 3,630 kg (8,003 lb).
  • Max takeoff weight : 7,000 kg (15,432 lb).
  • Maximum speed : 185 km/h (115 mph; 100 kn).
  • Cruising speed : 145 km/h (90 mph; 78 kn).
  • Range : 800 km (497 mi; 432 nmi).
  • Service ceiling : 3,500 m (11,483 ft).
  • Rate of climb : 1.5 m/s (300 ft/min).
  • Time to altitude : 3,000 m (9,843 ft) in 33 minutes.
  • Powerplant : Two Rolls-Royce Eagle IX V-12 water-cooled piston engines.
  • Power : 265 kW (355 hp) each.

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This text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Source : Article Dornier Do J of Wikipedia ( authors )
Dornier Do J Wal : Your comments on this subject
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