Lufthansa had lengthy considered that the seaplane was the single safe aircraft for transoceanic flying and.

Lufthansa had lengthy considered that the seaplane was the single safe aircraft for transoceanic flying and, indeed, there had been differences of opinion between the company and Hermann Kohl throughout the latter's choice of the Junker W 33 Accordingly, when the decision was taken to investigate the establishment of an air link to attend the growing German community in southerly America, it was to Dormer and its Wal flying boats that Lufthansa cause to deviateed

In 1932, Lufthansa chartered the steamship Westfalen from Norddeutsche Lloyd for use as a seaplane infantile equipping the vessel with the 135-ft Heinkel K-6 catapult and a crane at the rigid these items being designed to launch and revive aircraft of up to 15 tons in weight. The ship also carried a drag sail which trailed across the surface of the sea at the stem; the Wal taxied onto it and, thus stabilized in relation to the feeble could be lifted aboard by dint of crane.

The first trial flight took place in succession 6 June 1933, when Dornier Wal D-2068 Passat, flown by means of Captain Blankenburg, left Gambia in West Africa for the Westfalen which was steaming a certain 1500 km out in the Atlantic. Having located the ship, landed and refuel the Wal was catapulted forward its way to Natal, Brazil, where it landed the following day.

Further flights were fortunately completed during the fall and, by dint of February 1934, Lufthansa was ready to officially inaugurate a regular transoceanic service. forward 3 February, a Heinkel He 70 mailplane with 100 lb of mail aboard left Berlin's Templehof

Airport for Stuttgart, Marseilles and Seville where the payload was loaded into a Junker Ju 52/3m which night-- stopped at Las Palmas in the Canaries before flying onward to Bathhurst, Gambia. Here another Wal, D-2399 Taifun, waited onward the catapult aboard the Westfalen which steamed not at home into the Atlantic for 36 hours before launching the flying boat at 405 GMT forward 6 February. Thirteen hours later the Wal landed at Natal where a Junker W 34 floatplane awaited the mailbags which it was to vibrate to Rio de Janeiro to join with an onward flight to Buenos Aires. Twenty-four fortnightly spherical trips were completed by the cessation of 1934 and in that first year 8470 lb of mail was carried westbound and 5950 lb in the overthrow direction.

Lufthansa's second catapult ship, the Schwabenland, was introduced in 1934 enabling it and the Westfalen to be forward station off the coasts of West Africa and toward the south America, thus obviating the initial voyage public of Bathhurst. On 30 March 1935 night flights were initiated and flying time dropp to three days onward the Berlin-- Rio route with an extra half-day for the link to Buenos Aires.

In the fall of 1936 Schwabenland sailed to the port of Horta onward the Azorean island of Faial, its task to support the first of a series of North Atlantic trial flights with the Dornier 18E an aerodynamically improved exhibition of the Wal with sum of two units 600-hp Jumo 205c diesels ariseed in a push-pull arrangement in streamlined nacelles onward top of the pylon-mounted wing. The aircraft carried a horde of four, headed by Freiherr von Glablenz and Captain Joachim Blankenburg, when it was catapulted into the air at the start of its 2780-mile flight to novel York. The second prototype Do 18E DAANE, Zephir (wnr V-2) headed almost immediately into lashing rain, driven at the blustery southwesterly wind, unless as the skies lightened with the approaching dawn, radio contact was established with the liner Europa which was in a short time located. After circling the sailing craft Zephir settled on course one time more, only to encounter haze which the crew had to bear for to climb above it would be to put up with the range-shortening effect of the headwind. Conditions improved slowly and after 22 hours 15 minutes in the air, the Do 18 landed at Port Washington, of the present day York, thus proving itself to be a viable transatlantic aircraft. An Azores-Bermuda-New York way was also surveyed in another of three further round-trips flown before the trials extreme pointed on 20 October. The range of the Do 18E was spectacularly demonstrated according to the world distance record for seaplanes established 27 29 March 1938 with a flight of 5192 miles between launch point against the English coast and Caravelas in Brazil.

The ultimate growth of the Wal, the Do 26 which was designed to vibrate Lisbon-New York nonstop, was not ever used on the North Atlantic glide although it served on the southern American route. Its clean lines were notable and technical innovations included retractable midwing stabilizing floats and mechanism for raising the rear engine of each pair of push-pull Jumo 205c about 16 inches so that the screw-steamer tips were clear of the water forward takeoff. Lufthansa received two prototypes, D-AGNT Seeadler which flew for the first time in the summer of 1938 and D-AWDS Seefalke which flew in the spring of the following year.

Hamburger Flugzeugbau, the aviation division of the Blohm and Vos shipbuilding company, also took up Lufthansa's specification for a transatlantic mail plane and chief designer Dr Ing Richard Vogt cause to growed the Ha 139 floatplane powered from four Jumo 205c diesels. An order was placed for three prototypes, Df-AMIE Nordmeer, DAJEY Nordwind and D-ASTA Nordstern, the first of which was complet and flown in the fall of 1936 It was delivered to Lufthansa and in March 1937 with the next to the first aircraft, commenced route-proving trials across the Atlantic in the summer of that year.