169 people and a flying boat

On 21 October 1929, a flying boat the size of a small ship lifted off Lake Constance with 169 people aboard — 150 of them passengers. The flight lasted 40 minutes and set a world record that stood for 20 years. The aircraft was the Dornier Do X, with twelve engines mounted in back-to-back pairs on its wing. A year later it set off for New York, and arrived nearly ten months later, on 27 August 1931.

The Zeppelin man

The man behind it was Claude Dornier, born in Kempten in 1884 to a French wine-importer father and a German mother. After studying in Munich he joined Count Zeppelin’s airship works at Friedrichshafen in 1910 and quickly became the Count’s scientific adviser. In 1914 Zeppelin gave him his own department, Abteilung Do, to explore all-metal aircraft. It became Zeppelin-Werk Lindau in 1917, produced the D.I — the first stressed-skin all-metal monocoque aircraft to enter production — and in 1922 became Dornier Metallbauten, based at Manzell.

The Wal: dodging Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles banned Germany from building powerful aircraft, so Dornier simply built elsewhere. His Wal flying boat first flew on 6 November 1922 at Marina di Pisa in Italy, and more than 250 were made in Italy, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands and Germany. Roald Amundsen flew two Wals towards the North Pole in 1925, reaching 87 degrees 44 minutes north and returning after being presumed dead. From 1934 Lufthansa’s Wals flew more than 300 South Atlantic mail crossings. From 1926 a Swiss subsidiary at Altenrhein, just across the lake, gave Dornier another loophole.

The Flying Pencil and the Arrow

Under the Nazis Dornier became a mass producer of bombers. The slender Do 17, the Flying Pencil, flew on 23 November 1934; 2,139 were built, and it fought in Spain, Poland, France and the Battle of Britain. One shot down in August 1940 was raised from the Goodwin Sands in 2013. The heavier Do 217 made history in 1943 when its Fritz X guided bombs sank the Italian battleship Roma — the first combat use of precision-guided munitions from an aircraft. Most startling was the Do 335 Pfeil, with one propeller in the nose and another in the tail, capable of 770 km/h. Only 37 were built.

Back in the air, via Spain

After 1945 Germany could not build aircraft at all, and Dornier went to Spain. Its Do 25 was designed for a Spanish requirement; the improved Do 27 first flew on 27 June 1955 and became the first mass-produced aircraft in postwar Germany, with 571 built, 40 of them by CASA. In 1959 a Do 27 became the first aircraft to land on Saba in the Caribbean. The Skyservant followed, then the Do 31 of 1967 — still the only jet-powered vertical take-off transport ever to fly — and, with Dassault, the Alpha Jet: 480 built, about 175 for the Luftwaffe.

A family, a carmaker and an American

The 1981 Dornier 228 utility turboprop found a second life in India, where HAL has built it under licence since 1985. But the Dornier family was divided. In 1985, with Baden-Württemberg’s premier Lothar Späth brokering the deal, Daimler-Benz took majority control; Silvius Dornier kept about 22 per cent. In 1996 Daimler’s aerospace arm sold the civil aircraft business to America’s Fairchild, creating Fairchild Dornier, briefly the world’s third-largest regional aircraft maker, with the 328 turboprop and the 328JET.

Twelve days in 2002

Fairchild Dornier staked its future on the 728, a regional jet with 60 firm orders from Lufthansa. On 21 March 2002 the first one was rolled out at Oberpfaffenhofen. On 2 April 2002, twelve days later, the company filed for insolvency. The three 728 prototypes never flew; one was sold to the German Aerospace Center for 19,000 euros. The name lives on in museums — the Do 335 in Washington, the Do 31 in Friedrichshafen and Munich — and in the 328, which Deutsche Aircraft is reviving at Oberpfaffenhofen as the D328eco.

Fábricas

• Seemoos and Manzell · Friedrichshafen, Lake Constance — Abteilung Do from 1914; Dornier Metallbauten moved to Manzell in 1922
• Lindau · Bavaria — Zeppelin-Werk Lindau, 1917–1919
• Marina di Pisa (CMASA) · Tuscany, Italy — Wal production 1921–1931, outside Versailles restrictions
• Altenrhein · St. Gallen, Switzerland — Swiss subsidiary from 1926; built the Do X
• Wismar · Mecklenburg — Founded 1933; Norddeutsche Dornier-Werke from 1938
• Oberpfaffenhofen · near Munich, Bavaria — Postwar centre: Alpha Jet assembly, 328 and 728 programmes
• Neuaubing · Munich — Wartime production site

Pessoas

• Claude Dornier · founder, designer (1884–1969) — Joined Zeppelin in 1910; pioneer of all-metal stressed-skin aircraft; Ludwig-Prandtl-Ring 1959
• Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin · patron — Gave Dornier his own department in 1914
• Claudius Dornier Jr. · aircraft designer (1914–1986) — Founder’s son, led the postwar company
• Silvius Dornier · shareholder — Kept about 22% after the 1985 Daimler-Benz takeover
• Lothar Späth · Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg — Brokered the 1985 Daimler-Benz takeover
• Roald Amundsen · polar explorer — Flew two Wals to 87 degrees 44 minutes north in 1925

Recordes e pioneirismos

• Do X carried 169 people on 21 October 1929, a record that stood for 20 years
• Wal N-25 reached 87 degrees 44 minutes north in 1925, the northernmost point then reached by aircraft
• Do 217 made the first combat use of precision-guided munitions from an aircraft, sinking the Roma in 1943
• Do 31: the only jet-powered VTOL transport ever flown; FAI VTOL records in 1969
• Do 27: first aircraft to land on Saba, 1959