Zeppelin-Lindau Gs.I

The Zeppelin-Lindau Gs.I, often called the Dornier Gs.I after its designer Claude Dornier, was a civil flying boat developed just after the First World War from a military prototype. It was first designed as a reconnaissance flying boat for the German Navy, and construction began in August 1918, but the Armistice stopped military aircraft building, so Zeppelin-Lindau completed one of the three ordered examples as a small airliner with a cabin for six passengers. The all-metal Gs.I was a high-wing, strut-braced monoplane with a duralumin hull and sponsons for stability on water; its two Maybach Mb IVa engines sat in push-pull configuration in a single cowling on top of the wing, and it had a twin-finned biplane tail. It first flew on 21 July 1919, was tried by the Swiss airline ad Astra, and was demonstrated in the Netherlands, where KLM was interested. On 25 April 1920, rather than let inspectors search it, its crew scuttled it in the Baltic. A larger Gs.II was left unfinished.