AERONAUTICS: Hapless DO-X

• Share

After three weeks of faltering, unimpressive flight from Switzerland, the great Dornier flying boat DO-X (TIME, Nov. 17) finally rode at anchor in Lisbon Harbor last week. There she was fuelled for another short hop to Cadiz while Dornier officials fussed and worried about her ability to fly to the U. S. this winter. Less than an hour after the fuel tanks were filled, fire broke out in the auxiliary engine room, jumped to the left wing, exploded the gasoline in the wing tank before the five men aboard knew what had happened. The four crewmen, led by Pilot Horst Merz, well aware that thousands of gallons of gasoline lay in the deep bottom tanks, seized fire extinguishers and attacked the great tower of flame that shot from the wing. They quenched it without the aid of volunteers who came scurrying across the bay in small boats from the Portuguese naval air station.

But the proud mammoth was a sorry grotesque sight. One wing, stripped of its covering, stretched its blackened framework upward at a crazy angle. The other, now unbalanced, dipped its weight into the sea. The hull was blackened, much of the interior flooded. Said Captain Friedrich Christiansen, returning from his shore visit, "It's hard luck, but our ocean trip will not be called off. It is only delayed."

Ever since the DO-X, when enroute to Bordeaux, fell 25 mi. short of her destination and was towed the remaining distance, there have been rumors that the twelve Curtiss Conqueror engines had not served well enough to warrant a transatlantic flight. These rumors the Brothers Dornier, Claude and Maurice, vigorously denied. But finally they did concede that bad weather on the Azores-Bermuda route had upset their plan to fly to New York. Instead, they planned to send the DO-X across the South Atlantic to Brazil. At that juncture Lieut. Clarence H. ("Dutch") Schildhauer, U. S. copilot, resigned. He had been loaned for the flight by Dornier Corp. of America, subsidiary of General Aviation Corp. (dominated by General Motors), which was interested in no South American flight. Dr. Claude Dornier left the craft in La Coruna, Spain and hurried to Berlin, supposedly to ask the transportation ministry to back him in the new venture. Even before he arrived, Air Director Ernst Brandenburg made known that the answer would be: "No funds available." Definite information was scanty.