Dornier Do X: A 12-Engine Flying Ocean Liner

Video from the channel IHYLS about Dornier Do X, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 11:08. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Educational video presenting the Dornier Do X as one of the first attempts to build a large passenger aircraft. It compares it with aircraft of its era, such as the 1913 Russky Vityaz, the ANT-20 or the DC-3, and reviews its design, flights and eventual fate.

At a time when runways limited aircraft size, taking off from water allowed much larger aircraft to be built. Claude Dornier had already succeeded with the Do J Wal, with tandem engines above the wing, in service from 1923 to 1950. Building on that basis, the Do X was born, flying in 1929.

It measured 131 feet in length (about 40 m) and almost 157 feet in wingspan (about 48 m). Its twelve 525-hp Siemens Jupiter engines, in six twin nacelles above the wing, were controlled by a flight engineer who received the pilot's orders by telegraph. In 1930 they were replaced with 610-hp Curtiss V-1570 engines. The interior had three decks, with the passenger lounges on the middle one. On 21 October 1929 it took off with 169 people on board, a record that stood for about twenty years. Between 1930 and 1932 it made a long tour: a fire in the wing held it up in Lisbon, it reached New York on 27 August 1931 and returned to Berlin on 24 May 1932. Italy bought the X2 and X3 units, fitted with Fiat A.22R engines; they were withdrawn in 1935 and scrapped in 1937. The original lost its tail in 1933, was transferred to a museum in 1936 and was destroyed in a British bombing raid during the Second World War.