Dornier Do 26
A German all-metal flying boat built by Dornier Flugzeugwerke for Deutsche Lufthansa's planned Lisbon to New York airmail service, the Do 26 first flew on 21 May 1938. Only six were built: the two civil aircraft flew South Atlantic mail in 1939, and all six, impressed or built as armed military aircraft, were used in the 1940 invasion of Norway, where three were lost. No complete example survives; wreckage of two of them lies off Narvik, and components from one are displayed at the Narvik War Museum.
Why It Mattered
The Dornier Do 26 was a German flying boat built for a route it never flew: Deutsche Lufthansa ordered the first three in 1937 to carry airmail from Lisbon to New York. To make the crossing, the aircraft was designed to be launched by catapult from supply ships and to carry 1,606 gallons of fuel. War came first: the type was taken over by the Luftwaffe after the outbreak of the Second World War and put to work as a transport. All six aircraft were used during the invasion of Norway in 1940, and three of the six were lost during the Norwegian campaign. A fourth aircraft, V5, was lost in November 1940.
Design Notes
The Do 26 abandoned the layout of Dornier's earlier flying boats: the wing was now a shoulder mounted cantilevered wing, and the Stummel sponsons that had steadied the earlier boats were removed. On the water, stability came instead from retractable floats set midway along the wing, which folded away in flight. The hull was long and slender, and the aircraft was an all-metal gull-winged flying boat. Four 600hp Junkers Jumo 205 diesel engines powered the first prototype, each nacelle carrying one tractor and one pusher engine. Each pusher propeller sat on a shaft that could be raised ten degrees at take-off, lifting the blades clear of the spray thrown up by the forward propeller. The military aircraft were armed with a 20mm MG 151 in an electrically operated bow turret and could carry up to 12 equipped troops.
Operational History
The first prototype, Seeadler, made its maiden flight on 21 May 1938. The second aircraft, Seefalke, followed on 23 November 1938. Both boats went to Lufthansa and flew the South Atlantic mail route, completing eighteen crossings before the war began. The North Atlantic route they were built for was never operated; instead, in 1939 they carried air mail between Bathurst and Natal on the South Atlantic route. In February 1939 Seefalke embarked on a mercy flight to Chile, carrying medical supplies for earthquake victims on a 10,700 km flight from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro that lasted 36 hours. The third aircraft, Seemöwe, was completed shortly before the start of World War II, and all three Lufthansa aircraft were impressed into military service in 1939. All six aircraft were used during the invasion of Norway, in April and May 1940. There they were used transporting supplies, troops and wounded to and from the German forces fighting around Narvik. On 8 May 1940, carrier aircraft — three Blackburn Skuas of 803 Naval Air Squadron — shot down Seefalke as it carried 18 Gebirgsjägers toward Narvik. Seeadler and Seemöwe were sunk at their moorings at Sildvik in Rombaksfjord on 28 May 1940, attacked by RAF Hurricanes shortly after landing. V5 was lost on 16 November 1940, after being launched at night from the catapult ship Friesenland at Brest, killing its crew. The last two aircraft, V4 and V6, were still assigned to the Test Unit at Travemünde in 1944; the fate of V4 and V6 is unclear.
Afterlife
No complete Do 26 survives. After the war, the wrecks of Seeadler and Seemöwe were located in Norwegian waters off Narvik; Seemöwe's wreck has since been removed, but the fuselage and wings of Seeadler remain in situ. The sunken Seeadler lies where it was sunk in 1940 and is an attraction for divers. Components from Seeadler, including the cockpit instrument panel and a propeller, are on display at the Narvik War Museum, and another propeller can be seen at the flying club in Bodø.