At about 10:35 in the morning of 17th December, 1903
Orville Wright made the first powered flight in a
fully controllable aircraft, which the Wright
brothers designed and developed. The flight lasted
just 12 seconds and stretched only 120 feet. In the
next few hours, however, Wilbur and Orville made
four flights, the longest was 852 feet. After the
fourth flight, a gust of wind rolled the aircraft
over and smashed it.
The success of the Wright brothers in launching an
aircraft into the air became the cornerstone for the
variety of early designs of aircrafts. Dr. Claudius
Dornier of Germany pioneered in the design and
development of seaplanes.
Perhaps the most dramatic flying boat ever built was
the giant Dornier Do X. Conceived by Dr. Claudius
Dornier, the Do X design took seven years to
complete and two years to build. The giant flying
boat was finally launched on July 12th, 1929.
Financed by the German transport ministry, the plane
was built on the Swiss portion of Altenrhein in
order to avoid the Allied Commission. When
completed, the Do X was the largest, heaviest and
most powerful aircraft in the world.
On October 21 st, the plane took off carrying 160
people consisting of 150 passengers, 10 crew and 9
stowaways, easily breaking the world record for the
number of people aboard a flight. A record that
would not be tested for 15 years. Weighing 48 tons,
the plane taxied for 50 seconds before slowly
ascending to only 650 feet. It flew for 40 minutes
at a maximum speed of 105 mph finally landing on
Lake Constance.
The luxurious accommodations and service on the Do X
were in keeping with the standards of trans-Atlantic
liners. Several cabins on the main deck held
passenqers comfortably on 32 double seats and two
single seats, while the cockpit, captain's cabin,
navigational office, engine control room and radio
office could be found on the upper deck along with
quarters for the 14 man crew. The lower deck held
fuel and stores.
The plane was enormous with a wingspan of 157 feet 5
inches, a length of 134 feet 2 inches and a height
of 33 feet. As a result of the massiveness of the
plane, passengers were asked to crowd together on
one side to help the flying boat make turns! The
plane had an all-metal hull with wings comprised of
a metal framework covered in fabric. Powered by
twelve 525 horsepower Siemens Jupiter engines
mounted in tandem on the wing, the plane was
designed to carry 66 passengers on long distances or
100 on short trips. The Jupiter engines were only
able to lift the plane to an altitude of 1,400 feet,
preventing the plane from making trans-Atlantic
crossings. After completing 103 flights in 1903, the
plane was refitted with water-cooled Curtiss
Conqueror engines at 610 horsepower each. On the
August 4, 1930 flight, newly fitted with Curtiss
engines, the plane reached 1,650 feet, a height that
was deemed suitable to cross the Atlantic.
The Do X took off from Freidrichshafen, Germany on
November 2, 1930 commencing its trans-Atlantic
proving flight. The route took the Do X to Lisbon,
down the Western African coast, across the Atlantic
to South America, and north to the United States
finally reaching New York on August 27, 1931. The
final leg of the trip began again on May 21, 1932
from New York to Newfoundland, on to the Azores, and
finally to Berlin where the Do X was met by a
cheering crowd of 200,000. Two other Do X planes,
the Do X2 and X3, were completed and delivered to
Italy in 1931. Because of their monstrous weight,
all three planes were deemed unsuitable for
commercial flight. The Do X was retired to the
Berlin Air Museum in 1934 and was destroyed by an
Allied air raid in 1943. The X2 and X3 were used
primarily by the Italian military for prestige
flights but were quickly retired from service in
1934. While the Do X was not a commercial success,
it was an important experiment in early aviation. It
remains, by its sheer physical strength and size,
one of the most extraordinary seaplanes in history.
After the Do X, re-designs came to being with the
0024 as the most prominent among them. In the
forties, the airplane was developed further to
DO-24TT which was put into commission as flight boat
for sea rescue. Although the DO-24TT retained its
physical appearance resembling that of a whale, it
is actually a prototype and modified in accordance
with recent know-how in the field of amphibian
aeroplanes. The DO-24TT was an upgraded variation of
the Dornier seaplanes and a product of extensive
research project conducted in 1979. On the 25th of
July 2003, Southeast Asian Airlines, Inc., through
its Chairman of the Board and grandson of Dr.
Claudius Dornier, Mr. Iren Dornier, acquired the
remaining units of the DO-24TT with the intention to
put the same into commercial operation. This
acquisition marks a lot of firsts in the Philippine
aviation industry as the first high-powered,
high-capacity seaplane to operate commercially in
the Philippines, first Asian country to play host to
such an historical seaplane, among other things.
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