The Dornier Do P was a German four-engined
heavy bomber
Heavy bombers are bomber aircraft capable of delivering the largest payload of air-to-ground weaponry (usually bombs) and longest range (takeoff to landing) of their era. Archetypal heavy bombers have therefore usually been among the larges ...
, manufactured by
Dornier Flugzeugwerke
Dornier Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturer founded in Friedrichshafen in 1914 by Claude Dornier. Over the course of its long lifespan, the company produced many designs for both the civil and military markets.
History
Originally ...
in the 1930s. It was built as part of
the secret rearmament of Germany, in opposition to the
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
.
Design and development
Construction of the Do P began in July 1929, and its first flight took place on March 31, 1930. The aircraft was tested in such places as
Lipetsk
Lipetsk ( rus, links=no, Липецк, p=ˈlʲipʲɪtsk), also romanized as Lipeck, is a city and the administrative center of Lipetsk Oblast, Russia, located on the banks of the Voronezh River in the Don basin, southeast of Moscow. Populatio ...
. The Do P was a monoplane constructed mainly of metal, but covered in some places by
fabric
Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...
. The aircraft was powered by four nine-cylinder
Siemens Jupiter
The Bristol Jupiter was a British nine-cylinder single-row piston radial engine built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Originally designed late in World War I and known as the Cosmos Jupiter, a lengthy series of upgrades and developments turn ...
VI, each with 530 horsepower. The aircraft had a crew of six. It was eventually developed into the
Dornier Do 11
The Dornier Do 11 was a Nazi Germany, German heavy bomber, developed in secret in the early 1930s. It was originally called the Dornier F before being renamed by the ''Reich Air Ministry, Reichsluftfahrtministerium'' (RLM) in 1933, and was consid ...
.
Specifications
References
{{Dornier aircraft
Do P
1930s German bomber aircraft
Four-engined push-pull aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1930