Qua patet orbis!

Pioneer flights! Adventure and Pure Romance!
Where?
In the Dornier Wal flying boat presentations of course!
And read all about it in the book too!

Qua patet orbis, “as far as the world reaches”, is certainly the right name for the multi- media presentations about the once forgotten Dornier Wal flying boat. (Given in English, German, French, Italian or Dutch by author M.Michiel van der Mey).
The evening incorporates unique films, slides and an exhibition as well as dealing with his book “Dornier Wal a Light coming over the Sea” of which the second edition was published in Florence in 2007.

As a result of the restrictions brought about by the Treaty of Versailles on German aircraft construction, the large open flying boat was first produced on the mouth of the Arno river in Marina di Pisa in the early 20’s of the last century.
The boat was produced in Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the Soviet Union and finally by the Dornier Works in Friedrichshafen (Manzell) Germany.
Thanks to international aviation pioneers such as the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, the Italian Antonio Locatelli, the British Frank Courtney, the German Wolfgang von Gronau, the Spanish Ramon Franco, the Portugese Sarmento de Beires and the Dutchman W.H.Tetenburg this flying boat carried out many pioneer flights and brought aviation to some of the remotest and coldest places in the world.
And so the Dornier Wal family of flying boats operated from the Soviet iced arctic to the large rivers in South America; over glacier-covered mountains of Antarctica and through the monsoon rains of Indonesia.

Until just before World War II the 10-tons Dornier Wals were used by the regular Lufthansa mail service from Gambia over the island Fernando Noronha to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. The flights between Africa and South America were carried out with the assistance of specially adapted tenders equipped with a compressed air catapult, a landing sail and a heavy crane.
This airmail-line was at the time the longest and most complicated in the world.

During the presentations films are shown of Dornier Wal passenger planes flying from Rome (Ostia) over Marina di Pisa to the drifting airport in the port of Genova, the Dornier Wal landing in New York and snow covered Germany and last but not least the German mail service to South America. During the presentation Van der Mey succeeds in creating a romantic aura around this flying boat.

The book describing these fantastic adventures was published with the support of the Caproni Museum in Trento and has a preface written by Countess Maria Fede Caproni, the daughter of aviation pioneer Gianni Caproni.

Lectures were given in a.o. Amsterdam, Brussels,Como, Delft, Den Helder, Friedrichshafen, Kleve, Liège, Madrid, Marina di Pisa, München, Rome, Rostock, Trento

Information: Contact

Photos of Presentation in Kleve