Another WW1 aircraft and seaplane base to identify

A great example of the strength of the forum. Great addition, and complete confirmation of the location, wieesso!

http://murciatoday.com/images/articles/18414_the-municipal-aeronautical-museum-los-alcazares_5_large.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-7fttNSHDOkM/UOWDp-EFjNI/AAAAAAAABNc/UeI0zZF7O_M/s720/1.3%2520EL%2520LUGAR%2520M%25C3%2581S%2520ACECUADO….jpg

Thank you all for this marvellous thread!!

Martin

Hi Biffo,
Glad to have been of help, and yes, I think you’re right, the key things do match! Well done, and a fascinating little bit of detective work by all.
Regards,

Hi James
I have done a little more research based on your comments about the buildings, which I agree are more typical Spanish types than Italian, also the seaplane bases in Italy at that time do not match the layout in this photo even if you “flip” it as snafu suggests. Further there are a lot of other seaplanes on the water and it would suggest a well established airbase which lead me to look at Spanish bases of which I am fairly sure I have found a match ; Los Alcazares in Murcia. It was the first Seaplane base in Spain formed in 1915 so by 1923 was well established as in our photo and the topography matches too… looking on google earth the street layouts match up and the positions of the hangars are still possible to make out ( there is even an aeronautical museum there !) although much of the buildings in the town are now modern apartment blocks the large squareish building on the seafront seems to be still there. Unfortunately the little church in the photo has been replaced by a very modern 60s or 70s concrete effort but it is still in the same position ( its wonderful how you can drive around a town these days in street view and see what the buildings look like now !!). Also my research shows that Los Alcazares was where the Plus Ultra flight set out from !!!
Snafu I have studied the original photo of the Wal and am now sure that what we are looking at is two side by side cockpit positions, not one offset to port or starboard. It is just that because of the blurring it is very difficult to seperate the outline of the edge of the fuselage with the buildings in the background so what looks like an offset cockpit is actually a part of the roof of the building behind. I also flipped the image in photoshop and this is still the same..so thanks for your input I think James may well be right we might have a photo of the Plus Ultra !!
So in all well done to you for pointing me in the right direction !!
Thanks for all the interesting comments and help
Regards
Richard

The church is the key. It’s over a Roman Catholic country, and I’m reasonably comfortable saying we are NOT over northern Italy, as neither the church nor the buildings look right to me. Some building might be adobe, putting us in a poorer, further south location. (Also the Church is wrong for orthodox Catholic, i.e. not Russia / Greece, or places like Turkey etc.)

The match of church types in this pic and the image in the top of the link, along with Adrian’s comment re-radio fit. put us, to me with ‘Plus Ultra’.

Snafu – that’s what ‘port’ and ‘starboard’ are for. 😉 You may be right, but I’m not sure either way.

Biffo – my suggestion (more explicit this time) is you look at the ports on the route of the Plus Ultra on Google Earth. I don’t have time for that. It’ll either give a likely match or eliminate it, where you can proceed.

Interesting!

Regards,

IF???;o)

Um, was the cockpit usually offset to the right (looking forward)? Is it offset to the left in this picture? There is something about the decking in front of the wing that looks a little different to all those I’ve looked at on Google Image, so if the picture has been flipped when printed (the negative being back to front) then it might be the other side of Italy!

But I’m probably wrong…

The Dornier factory in Italy was at Pisa. Well, Marina di Pisa to be precise, which is several miles away. The area has been redeveloped, but the modern coastline certainly doesn’t fit your picture, and I can’t find the factory buildings shown in my book on the history of Dornier in your photo either. And if snafu is right about the view being towards the south, then we’d be on the wrong side of Italy!

I’m sure James is right about it being an early Wal. He may have guessed correctly about it being ‘Plus Ultra’ too, as that had an unusual, if not unique, radio fit, and I’m having trouble finding another Wal which had that ‘spike’ between the two engines. However, the production run was some 250, and they did go all over the world…

James I am sure you are right it is an early Dornier Wal before 1926 when they changed the tailplane as you say. The other seaplanes in the harbour appear to be biplanes and the hangars at the back of the photo are military looking…could this be the Italian factory/airfield where they built the early Dorniers ? I have looked up early seaplane bases in Italy and so far I know it is not Brindisi as that base was set in an estuary which had building all round it in the 20s. I will keep looking…I suppose it might just be Argentina as his brother Raymond Bradley went out there after the war (I think)

Pretty definitely a Dornier Wal. Also it’s a Wal with the (I think early) tail, with the stepped fin and rudder arrangement. The W.W.I period is therefore definitely not correct.

See: http://static.rcgroups.net/forums/attachments/9/6/7/6/0/a1646350-119-Spanish-Wal2.JPG

Let’s say as a very famous Wal, it could be the ‘Plus Ultra’ as above (more pictures made, more likely to be kept). Story of the ‘Plus Ultra’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_Ultra_%28aircraft%29

Now see: http://www.lujanargentina.com/turismo_lugares_museos_complejo_museografico_udaondo_avion_plusultra.htm

Note the church in the top image, and the configuration of the tower and façade, windows etc. It’s a different church, but the style is the same as the church above the aircraft in your picture. In my opinion, the buildings are not Italian style, but could well be Spanish – more likely Latin American.

It’s a hypothesis (not by any means the only possibility) but if you search the list of ports visited by the Plus Ultra in the link above, you may find a match, or if not, eliminate the hypothesis as the record flight. It’s later use as a mailplane in Argentina would be a second hypothesis.

Hope that helps,

Ok I have photoshopped the pic and this is the best I can get from the blurry image….I would tend to agree the buildings in the background do look Italian so perhaps it could well be….there was another loose photo with this one showing my great grandfather and the other 3 memebers of the “victors” of the Bonham Carter trophy (Polo) dated 1923 so it might even be `23… anyway here is the blow up of the aircraft..I can not see any markings on it but perhaps you may be able to discern more from it…Thanks

[ATTACH=CONFIG]230800[/ATTACH]

Definitely post WWI! The Dornier J Wal made its first flight in 1922 (in Italy, due to restrictions made on Germany after the war, and production continued there until 1931 when it transferred to Germany, other than the licence built military versions produced in Spain and the Netherlands).

With a strong shadow coming from the rear of the image it could be that the view is toward the south (being that the shadow is not very long) and the landscape doesn’t look very northern European – might this be the east coast of Italy, the eastern Mediterranean (Greek Islands etc), or possibly Spain? Or somewhere else around one of the five continents because the Dornier Wal wasn’t exactly a stranger to globe trotting…;o)

But if you manage to zoom in on the aircraft itself and see if there are any markings that would help immensely.

If it is a Dornier as you say then would this be post war ? The photo was loose in my great grandfathers album and I know he retired from the Airforce in 1919 so it could well be from 1919 or even 1920.

Looks like a Dornier J or ‘Wal’ in the air. Can’t comment further, but an interesting pic!

Regards,