This famous plane was not allowed to be built in Germany

In April 1920, aircraft manufacturer Claude Dornier (1884–1969) received the news that would have meant the end of his company, which had been founded just three years previously. The victorious powers of the First World War had once again tightened the ban on aircraft construction in Germany, which had already been laid down in the Versailles Treaty. Civilian models should also be handed over to the winners immediately.

Dornier acted immediately. He had developed the Gs I on behalf of the Imperial Navy. This was a so-called flying boat that was to be used as a reconnaissance aircraft at sea. After the end of the war, Dornier converted the aircraft into a six-seater for passenger operations, because the Versailles Treaty initially only banned the construction of military and not civilian aircraft. When the message reached him, the designer was in Kiel. His actual destination was Norway, where interest in buying had been signalled. Dornier immediately sank the prototype so as not to let it fall into the hands of the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission.

The career of one of the most famous aircraft designers would have ended before even one of his models went into series production. But Claude Dornier, who had demonstrated his technical talent early on at Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen, was also a visionary entrepreneur. Ironically, "a member of the international control commission, an Italian officer, drew my attention to Italy as a possible location," he said later.

He found what he was looking for in the Societa Gallinari shipyard on the Arno near Marina di Pisa and founded a production facility with Italian partners. It was there, on the basis of the Gs I, that the aircraft emerged that Dornier was later able to say had made us “from an experimental company to an international aircraft manufacturer”: the Dornier Do J, better known as “the whale”.

In November 1922, his prototype completed the first successful flight. The first machines had a crew of three, flew at speeds of up to 190 kilometers per hour and reached a service ceiling of 3,500 meters. More than 300 examples in different series - mail planes, transporters, military machines, passenger and expedition planes - were built. The whale was "designed for takeoffs and landings on water," says a spokesman for the Dornier Museum in Friedrichshafen. At that time, most cities could be reached by water. With the special exhibition "Game Changer" the house is reminiscent of the career of the legendary whale until summer 2023.

Claude Honoré Désiré Dornier was born on May 14, 1884 in Kempten in the Allgäu. His father was a French wine merchant, and in 1913 his son was naturalized in Württemberg. After studying mechanical engineering in Munich, Claude Dornier was discovered by Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1910. He had become famous through the development of the rigid airships named after him. But he had recognized the potential of heavier-than-air aircraft.

So he gave his young employee the freedom to tinker with his designs. At the beginning of 1917, Dornier became managing director of an independent company in the Zeppelin factory and dedicated himself to the construction of flying boats in Seemoos, not far from Ludwigshafen. In addition to Marina di Pisa, a production facility was built in Rohrschach on the Swiss side of Lake Constance. Because even the construction of civil aircraft that could fly faster than 170 kilometers per hour, could carry a payload of more than 600 kilograms and had a range of more than 300 kilometers was forbidden under the Versailles Treaty.

Before the whale took off for the first time on November 6, 1922, it had already convinced the Spanish military leadership. However, in order not to jeopardize the prospect of series production, Dornier accepted the Spaniards' request to install Hispano Swiza engines from Spanish stocks. However, they proved to be unreliable, so that the transfer became a problem. With units from Rolls-Royce, BMW or Fiat, the whale showed not only excellent flight characteristics, but also robust stability even under the most difficult conditions.

This was proven by none other than the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen, who set off for the North Pole in 1925 with two modified whale machines. A flying boat had to make an emergency landing 250 kilometers from the North Pole. With the other, however, the entire expedition crew was able to make it to Spitsbergen.

The famous first circumnavigation of the world by Wolfgang von Gronau was accomplished in a whale in the early 1930s. The seaplane flew more than 44,400 kilometers and 270 flight hours before arriving back in List on Sylt. Various records for distance and payload rounded off the success story of the whale. After adding a highlight to his flying boat family with the huge Do X at the end of the 1920s, Claude Dornier was also integrated into the Nazis' concept of rearmament from 1933 onwards. However, the numerous machines with the registration Do no longer had much in common with the Wal.

Exhibition "Game Changer", Dornier Museum Ludwigshafen, until summer 2023

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