page_title: Dornier Do J
section_title: Pioneering flights
hierarchical_section_title: Dornier Do J / Design and development / Pioneering flights
caption_attribution_description: English: The replica of the flying boat Dornier Wal N25 at the Dornier Museum Friedrichshafen.
context_page_description: The Dornier Do J Wal is a twin-engine German flying boat of the 1920s designed by Dornier Flugzeugwerke. The Do J was designated the Do 16 by the Reich Air Ministry under its aircraft designation system of 1933.
context_section_description: The Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen accompanied by Lincoln Ellsworth, pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, and three other team members used two Dornier seaplanes in his unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole in 1925. His two aircraft, N-24 and N-25, landed at 87° 44' north. It was the northernmost latitude reached by any aircraft up to that time. The planes landed a few miles apart without radio contact, yet the crews managed to reunite. One of the aircraft, the N-24, was damaged. Amundsen and his crew worked for over three weeks to prepare an airstrip to take off from the ice. They shoveled 600 tons of ice while consuming only one pound (454 g) of daily food rations. In the end, six crew members were packed into the N-25. Riiser-Larsen took off, and they barely became airborne over the cracking ice. They returned triumphantly after widely being presumed dead.
  On 18 August 1930, Wolfgang von Gronau started on a transatlantic flight in the same Dornier Wal (D-1422) Amundsen had flown, establishing the northern air route over the Atlantic, flying from Sylt (Germany)-Iceland-Greenland-Labrador-New York 4,670 mi (7,520 km)) in 47 flight hours. In 1932 von Gronau flew a Dornier Wal (D-2053) called the "Grönland Wal" (Greenland Whale) on a round-the-world flight.
  In 1926 the captain Ramón Franco became a national Spanish hero when he piloted the Plus Ultra on a trans-Atlantic flight, following the route made by the Portuguese aviators Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho in the first flight across the South Atlantic in 1922. His co-pilot was Julio Ruiz de Alda Miqueleiz; the other crew members were Teniente de Navio (Navy Lieutenant) Juan Manuel Duran and the mechanic Pablo Rada. The Plus Ultra departed from Palos de la Frontera, in the Province of Huelva, Spain, on 22 January and arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 26 January. It stopped over at Gran Canaria, Cape Verde, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo. The 10,270 km journey was completed in 59 hours and 39 minutes.
  The event appeared in most major newspapers worldwide, although some of them underlined the fact that the airplane itself, plus the technical expertise were foreign. Throughout the Spanish-speaking world, the Spanish aviators were wildly acclaimed, particularly in Argentina and Spain where thousands gathered at Plaza de Colón in Madrid.
  In 1929 Franco attempted another trans-Atlantic flight, this time crashing the airplane in the sea near the Azores. The crew was rescued days later by the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle of the British Royal Navy.
  The Portuguese military aviator major Sarmento de Beires and his crew (captain Jorge de Castilho as navigator and lieutenant Manuel Gouveia as flight engineer) made the first aerial crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by night in a Dornier J named Argos. The crossing was made on the night of the 16 to 17 March 1927, from the Bijagós Archipelago in Portuguese Guinea to Fernando de Noronha island in Brazil.
  Two Dornier Wals (D-ALOX Passat and D-AKER Boreas) also played an important role in the Third German Antarctic Expedition of 1939.
caption: Reconstructed Dornier Wal N25 in the Dornier Museum Friedrichshafen
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