Category:Dornier Do-X Flying Boats

1929: The Do.X on the water [image info]

1936: Märklin promotional image [image info]

The Dornier Do.X Flying Boat was the largest and heaviest aircraft in the world at the time it was built. Imagined in 1934 by Claude Dornier, the project was underway by the end of 1925, and the first plane was completed in mid-1929.

Configuration

An absolute monster of an aircraft, outfitted internally like a luxury ocean liner, the Do.X had a ridiculous twelve engines arranged in six pods as back-to-back pairs, one propeller in front of the wing as a "puller" or "tractor" prop, and its partner behind the wing as a "pusher".

Service

Too big to go into normal European service, Dornier operated the aircraft themselves as an attraction and as a publicity device. Hopes to sell Do.Xes to the US were dashed by the Great Depression, and Dornier built just two more examples, to go to Italy.

Dornier's prototype was then inherited by Luft Hansa, who took it on a slightly accident-prone tour, which resulted in it losing a wing while parked. Like the even more vast Zeppelins, it was important that Do.X operators were very aware of the unique handling characteristics of their craft, and after two of the three planes lost their tails in similar accidents due to pilot error, the machines were mothballed and changed hands while people wondered what to do with them next, until they were finally broken up in 1937.

The Do.X in toys and models

As the world's biggest flying boat ... and as something that clearly looked like the world's biggest flying boat ... the Do.X certainly captured people's attention. But the sheer size of the thing meant that a toy, to scale with the rest of an existing aircraft range, would be really very big, and therefore expensive. Marklin did produce a promotional image with two children building a giant Do.X model from Märklin Metall, but in terms of commercial toymaking, the Do.X, as in real life, was just too big for its own good.

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