Gallery

ANOTHER LOOK AT THE CATAPULT MAIL PLANES

The advertisement at the right was published • in the Luposta catalog, which provided all the details of the great exposition of 1932. This seaplane was catapulted from the Europa, the second of the two steamers connecting Europe with New York in the 1930s. Art Hecker's card, shown on page 18, was carried aboard the D (for Dampfer) "Bremen", one of the super liners of the German merchant marine. Notice that the airline had almost reached the presentday configuration of "Lufthansa" in the ad.

PHOTOS AT LEFT:
1. The first practical experiment in coordinating air and shipping operations was with a Junkers-F 13, taking off from the sea alongside the Norddeutscher Lloyd Lützow in 1927.

2. The Heinkel Fie 12 "New York" was Nprd Deutscher Lloyd's first aircraft to be catapulted from an ocean liner, the famous Bremen, in 1929.

3. A Heinkel He58 flew from the Europa from 1930

Germany's national airline, Lufthansa, traces its heritage to the earliest years of aviation. By 1919, when Lufthansa's first progenitor, Deutsche Luft-Reederei, established the crane symbol, the German public was already airborne. Count Zeppelin's airships had carried more than 10,000 paying passengers before World War I.
Considering the catapult flights of the 1930s, few South Atlantic covers are seen.
Who can furnish copies of some?

 

Danzig Report  Nr. 99 - April - May - June - 1998, Page 22.