Simulating the Voyage of the Plus Ultra

Claude Dornier, born in 1884, was the son of a French wine merchant and his German wife. Dornier grew up in Bavaria and graduated from engineering school in Munich. He went to work for Ferdinand von Zeppelin at his base in Friedrichshafen and soon rose to become the count’s top technical adviser, helping design dirigibles and airplanes. In 1914, Dornier formed his own airplane company, also based in Friedrichshafen. A museum is located on the site today.

After Germany’s defeat in World War I, all aircraft production in the country was prohibited. Dornier continued to design aircraft but had to produce them in Italy. The Dornier Do J flying boat represented his first major success.

The Do J was powered by two piston engines placed in tandem (front and back) over the wing. A variety of different types of engines were used, depending on availability and needs. These are British-made Napier Lion 12 cylinders, putting out 450 hp each. The engines were accessible via a ladder on the platform behind the cockpit.

The floats on either side of the fuselage, supporting the wing struts, are Dornier’s patented “sponsons,” which made it more stable in the water than the more common side pontoons.

The cockpit itself was completely open and exposed to the elements. Keep that in mind during the long journey ahead. What’s more, sitting in the cockpit, that big propeller is turning right above your head.

Inside the cockpit, the main pilot’s seat is on the right, not the usual left. The throttle and fuel mixture levers for both engines are on the pilot’s right side. Note the mechanical wires and pulleys connecting the controls to the control surfaces. The position of the instruments, directly behind the “wheel,” makes them a bit difficult to see.

The Dornier Do J made its maiden flight in 1922. The nickname “Wal” means “whale” in German.

The specific airplane we’re looking at right now was called the “Plus Ultra.” And we’re joining it just as it prepares to take off from the Rio Tinto in front of Palos de la Frontera in southern Spain for a historic flight on January 22, 1926.

The pilot was Captain Ramon Franco, brother of future Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Both were officers in the Spanish army, though in 1920, Ramon had joined the country’s new air force. The co-pilot was Captain Julio Ruiz de Alda, who later helped found Spain’s fascist Falangist movement and was executed by anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. There were also two more crewmembers, a lieutenant and a mechanic, who I presume were located inside the hull.

Their goal was to fly from Spain across the south Atlantic to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a series of stages. Their point of departure, Palos de la Frontera, was symbolic because it is where Christopher Columbus sailed from on his first voyage to the Americas.

Rio Tinto is also the name of a large British mining company that operated the famous copper mines here, just outside of Huelva, starting in the late 1800s. These were its loading piers below me. At the very tip of the peninsula, where the rivers converge, is a monument to Columbus’ voyages.

“Plus Ultra” means “further beyond” in Latin and is the national motto of Spain. The first leg of this journey was 1,300 kilometers to the Canary Islands, all by sea. Weight is everything on a journey like this. Before departing Spain, they actually discovered a stowaway on board—a newspaper reporter—who could have ruined their plans.

The journey to the Canary Islands took eight hours. Consider that’s an awfully long time to be in an open cockpit, completely exposed to the elements, over the ocean.

We’ve arrived at the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The Plus Ultra landed a bit farther south along the shore, at the Bay of Gando, where Gran Canaria’s modern international airport is located.

On the 26th, they took off from Gran Canaria on the second leg: 1,745 kilometers to Cabo Verde, off the western tip of Africa. This time, the journey lasted nine hours and 50 minutes over the ocean before reaching land. I’m arriving at Praia, at Cabo Verde, just as the sun is setting.

From Cabo Verde, the Plus Ultra took off for the third and longest stage across the Atlantic to Brazil. On this leg, the airplane ran into serious headwinds that slowed its progress considerably and pushed it off course.

Almost out of fuel, they fortunately came across the tiny islands of Fernando de Noronha, 350 kilometers off the northeast tip of Brazil. It must have been an extremely welcome sight. Today the islands are still very remote and mainly popular for ecotourism. They had traveled 2,305 kilometers in 12 hours and 40 minutes.

I have no idea how they refueled here, but somehow they did, and by January 31 were ready to depart on their next stage. You’d think that the next leg, 540 kilometers to Recife on the mainland coast of Brazil, would be easy by comparison. In fact, the rear propeller broke and had to be fixed in mid-flight. Unless they landed in the ocean, I assume they had the mechanic climb up there while still in the air. I tried it, and the plane can still fly on one engine—barely. After three hours and 38 minutes, though, they made it safely to Recife.

From here it was a matter of following the coast for 2,100 kilometers to Rio de Janeiro, which took 12 hours and 15 minutes. They arrived in Rio to a rapturous welcome on February 4. The crew of the Plus Ultra were not, in fact, the first pilots to fly across the south Atlantic to Rio. Two Portuguese aviators had done so, from Lisbon, in 1922. But they had used three different airplanes. This was the first crossing in a single plane.

From there, another 2,060 kilometers to Montevideo, Uruguay, greeted by another huge crowd on February 9. And, finally, across the River Plate to their destination: Buenos Aires, Argentina. It had been a journey of 10,270 kilometers in 59 hours and 30 minutes in the air, at an average speed of 172 km/h.

Their arrival in Buenos Aires on February 10, 1926, was a major news event in Spain and throughout Latin America, which was now linked to Europe by air. The Argentinian songwriter Carlos Gardel composed a popular tango to celebrate the flight of the Plus Ultra, “La Gloria del Águila” (Glory of the Eagle). The Plus Ultra itself is preserved in a museum just outside of Buenos Aires. The crew returned to Spain as national heroes.

Ramon Franco’s subsequent story is a curious one. Far from sharing his brother’s right-wing politics, he entered that realm as a left-wing republican anarchist, involved in conspiracies to overthrow the monarchy. But blood proved thicker, and he sided with his brother Francisco in the Spanish Civil War. Ramon was killed in 1938, when his seaplane crashed during a bombing mission against Valencia.

The journey of the Plus Ultra was not the only famous voyage undertaken by the Dornier Do J. Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen attempted to fly two of them to the North Pole in 1925. Amundsen took off and landed them directly on the polar ice sheet but unfortunately landed somewhat short of his goal. Their plan was to fly two (N24 and N25) to the North Pole, transfer the fuel, and fly only one of them (N25) back, which they did. Their failure to reach the North Pole opened the door for the American Richard Byrd’s attempt the following year, which I covered in another post on the Fokker F.VII.

Like the Fokker F.VIII, the Dornier Do J also served as an airliner. The passenger versions had a cabin in the front of the hull, pushing the cockpit back a bit behind the front propeller. Here’s a look at the interior of the Dornier Do J’s passenger cabin.

Passengers and mail would arrive on other airplanes down from Europe, transfer at Bathurst to the Dornier Do J for the ocean crossing, then once in South America, catch yet another airplane to their final destinations.

Lufthansa competed with the predecessor of Air France on what became known as the “Southern Mail” (from Europe to Latin America), though the French did not fly Dorniers. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, famous for writing The Little Prince, flew this route for the French rival to Lufthansa. His books imbued the Southern Mail with an aura of romance and daring.

Initially, the Dornier Do J couldn’t make the crossing in one go. It has to land in the ocean midway to meet up with a prepositioned ship to refuel. However, landing and taking off in the deep ocean swells proved hazardous and also consumed a lot of fuel. So by 1934 they were making the flight directly, though the airline maintained support ships if needed.

Claude Dornier went on to build even larger seaplanes, including the 12-engine Dornier Do X in 1929. Dornier also built bombers and other aircraft for the new German Luftwaffe, including the Do 17 “Flying Pencil” that took part in the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of Britain. In contrast to Hugo Junkers, who opposed the Nazis and lost his company to them, Dornier joined the Nazi Party in 1940 to secure his aircraft contracts. 

Dornier escaped prosecution as a war criminal but was classified as a Nazi “follower”—an ignominious end to his career. He died in 1969, but his company still exists in various forms, as subsidiaries of larger firms, including EADS Group.

I hope you enjoyed the story of the Dornier Do J Wal, an airplane whose bulky, boat-like shape belies its pioneering role in the history of early aviation.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with many more screenshots and historical images, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing the Dornier Do J Wal add-on to MSFS 2020, along with sceneries produced by Romantic Wings, as well as by fellow users and shared on flghtsim.to for free.