This short silent film shows the Dornier Do X, the largest, heaviest, and most powerful flying boat in the world when it was produced by the Dornier company of Germany in 1929. First conceived by Dr. Claudius Dornier in 1924, planning started in late 1925 and after over 240,000 work hours it was completed in June 1929.

During the years between the two World Wars, only the Russian Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorki landplane of a few years later was physically larger, but at 53 metric tons maximum takeoff weight it was not as heavy as the Do X’s 56 tonnes.

The Do X was financed by the German Transport Ministry and in order to circumvent conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, which forbade any aircraft exceeding set speed and range limits to be built by Germany after World War I, a specially designed plant was built at Altenrhein, on the Swiss portion of Lake Constance.