Dornier Do 212

The Dornier Do 212 was a four-seat experimental amphibian flying boat built by the Swiss subsidiary of Dornier at Altenrhein on Lake Constance, with design begun in 1938 by the German and Swiss branches. It was an all-metal cantilever monoplane with fixed wingtip floats and a 343 kW Hirth twelve-cylinder air-cooled engine buried in the fuselage behind the cabin, driving a propeller behind the tail by a shaft that tilted up 12 degrees for water clearance. Take-off trials from water on 3 August 1942 failed, a Do 24 towed it into the air, and instability forced a ditching. Cooling and the extension shaft remained problems and the prototype was scrapped in 1943.