Ice, Ice, Baby

Russian aviation site "Wings Palette" has some great pictures of the Dornier Do J Wal in various livery schemes.   Browse through the gallery and you'll see there was a huge amount of variation in hull and engine configurations over the lifetime of the aircraft.  This particular plane is representative of the Wals used by Chile for exploration and mapping missions over the southern part of the country.

This closeup shot gives  you a better look at the nose of the plane.  That small propeller pod attached to the hull is an air driven generator for the radio set.  Like the planes from "At the Mountains of Madness" this model was intended for very harsh and cold conditions.  What's interesting is that the aircraft isn't sealed, a trait it shares with the planes used on Amundsen's arctic flight.  Why would you expose the interior of a cold weather aircraft to frigid open air conditions?

The answer is condensation.  Sealed metal hulled aircraft could have serious problems with water condensing and then freezing on the interior of the hull.  The problem could be solved by using heat exchangers to warm low humidity exterior air and vent it inside the hull, but the equipment was prone to breakdowns and imposed a significant weight penalty.

The Wal In Action

"The Flugzeuge" brings us this classic newsreel footage of Dornier Do-J Wals contracted for postal service taking part in landing and recovery operations in the Atlantic. There are a few glimpses of the plane's suprisingly roomy interior, including the radio station. The enclosed cockpit on this model would be ideal for the Wals used by the Miskatonic expedition in Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness".

Wings Over Antarctica: The Backtracking

After weighing all the feedback I've decided to stick with using the Dornier Do-J "Wal" as the Dyer expedition aircraft.

There's certainly a case to be made for the Merkur, but in the end I found myself agreeing with those that sided with the Wal. Frankly, it just looks better. The Merkur is a fine little aircraft, but it suffers from looking like all the other single-engined planes of the classic era. The Wal is nothing if not distinctive.

Here's the basic color logo I'll be using for the next run of swag. There are some relatively trivial composition and scale changes, but the biggest difference will be in the background colors. The dark blue of the original design will be lightened a few shades to provide more contrast with the plane in the embroidered versions. The dark grey of the outer text ring is now the same red as the Miskatonic University logo, giving the overall design a bit more pop.

I'll finish up the black and white version, and a stencil template for marking gear and equipment crates, over the next few days.

Wings Over Antarctica, Part Trois

I had originally planned to show the new Miskatonic Antarctic expedition logo tomorrow, but things went better than expected and I was able to finish the roughs early. These are still subject to change, but they're pretty close to being ready. Other than replacing the Dornier Wal with the Dornier Merkur II the changes are relatively minor.

First off, the black and white line art. This would be used for documents, letterheads, envelopes, and such. If it goes over well I'll do a version with slightly heavier line widths and a little grain for a print reproduction.



Next, the color version of the logo. This will be used for small items like the patches and pins. The outer ring has been changed from light grey to Miskatonic red. It's a good tie-in to the University logo and makes the whole design a lot snappier.



Here's a variant of the color logo with more of an Art Deco feel. It takes advantage of countershading to provide dimensionality and uses more muted colors. This is what I'd like to use for larger reproductions like T-shirts.



I still need to work out a stencil version, but these should cover most uses. As always, your thoughts are appreciated.

Wings Over Antarctica, Part Deux

Yesterday I wrote about the history of the Miskatonic University Antarctic expedition logo. Today I want to discuss why the second version of that design used the Dornier Do-J "Wal" as the expedition aircraft, and what ultimately made me change my mind about that identification. If you're not into historical research, or are easily bored, I'd suggest skipping to the end.

The text of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" provides few hard details about what model of aircraft was flown by Dyer's party. That's understandable given that he was more concerned with crafting a thrilling weird tale than a treatise on aviation. Complicating things is the fact that the information he does share is somewhat confusing. Again, that's not unexpected. Lovecraft was a master at incorporating historic and scientific details that would give his stories a sense of believability, but he never let the real world get in the way of the story. Surprisingly, the vague details in the story point to a single specific aircraft. Here is what he tells us:

"Four large Dornier aëroplanes, designed especially for the tremendous altitude flying necessary on the antarctic plateau and with added fuel-warming and quick-starting devices worked out by Pabodie, could transport our entire expedition from a base at the edge of the great ice barrier to various suitable inland points, and from these points a sufficient quota of dogs would serve us."

"Later, when not using all the other planes for moving apparatus, we would employ one or two in a shuttle transportation service between this cache and another permanent base on the great plateau from 600 to 700 miles southward, beyond Beardmore Glacier."

"Danforth and I, studying the notes made by Pabodie in his afternoon flight and checking up with a sextant, had calculated that the lowest available pass in the range lay somewhat to the right of us, within sight of camp, and about 23,000 or 24,000 feet above sea-level."

"We were now, after a slow ascent, at a height of 23,570 feet according to the aneroid; and had left the region of clinging snow definitely below us."

"It did not seem necessary to protect the plane with a snow banking for so brief a time and in so comfortable an absence of high winds at this level; hence we merely saw that the landing skis were safely lodged, and that the vital parts of the mechanism were guarded against the cold."

"At a very high level there must have been great disturbance, since the ice-dust clouds of the zenith were doing all sorts of fantastic things; but at 24,000 feet, the height we needed for the pass, we found navigation quite practicable."

Put that all together and you have the Dyer expedition's airplane - a Dornier model available in late 1929 to early 1930 with a flight range of at least 800 miles and a maximum flight ceiling at or above 24,000 feet. Oh, and it has to have landing skis. There's a good deal of wiggle room about the plane's flight characteristics based on the conjectural modifications carried out by Dornier and Frank Pabodie, but the presence of landing skis narrows it down to only one plane: the Dornier Do-B, most likely the "Merkur II" variant.



All of the other general aviation Dorniers at the time were flying boats that wouldn't need skis to touch down on ice and snow. In fact, the addition of skis to the aircraft, most likely attached to the wingtips, would have been downright dangerous. A block of ice or dip in the terrain could have catastrophically ripped apart the wing.

That leads to an obvious question. Why did I insist that the expedition used the Dornier Do-J "Wal" up until now, when Lovecraft's mention of landing skis conclusively identified the aircraft?



The answer is that I deferred to the expertise of some of the best Lovecraft scholars in the world. The identification of the Wal as the Dyer party's aircraft appears in S.T. Joshi's The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft and again in The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories , credited to Jason C. Eckhardt. From the former:

"More exactly, as Jason C. Eckhardt ("Behind the Mountains of Madness: Lovecraft and the Antarctic in 1930," Lovecraft Studies No. 14 [Spring 1987]:31-38) points out, Dornier Do-J "Wal" airplanes, a twin-engine, single-wing flying boat used primarily for passenger service."

"The Dornier-Wal planes were capable of carrying 7000 pounds of cargo. Eckhardt, basing his calculations on those supplied by Byrd, has conjectured that the total cargo of the Miskatonic Expedition may have come to about 21,000 pounds (12 men = 2400 lbs.; 36 dogs [80 lbs each] = 2880 lbs.; human food = 2160 lbs.; dog food = 3888 lbs.; gasoline = 9000 lbs.; miscellaneous cargo = 1300 lbs.), well within the capacity of the four planes."

That's the citation I relied on. Eckhardt's scholarship makes perfect sense, and is an example of the kind of historical research I delight in, but it ignores the presence of landing skis on the aircraft. I want to make clear that I'm not pointing a finger of blame at either Eckhardt or Joshi, who I have an immense amount of respect for. I just think the seemingly trivial issue of the skis has more importance than they do.

What complicates matters even further is that I think Lovecraft intended the planes to be Wals. We know that Roald Amundsen's expeditions to both the North and South polar areas were among his inspirations for "At the Mountains of Madness". The Wal seems perfect for polar exploration, as Amundsen demonstrated during his historic attempt at reaching the North Pole in 1925. The tough aluminum hull was ideal for operations on ice or water, the dual engines provided a comforting measure of redundancy in case of trouble, and the sheer carrying capacity of the plane allowed for extended operations.

More intriguingly, the Wal's long distance flying characteristics were front page news in the months leading up to Lovecraft writing ATMOM. He penned the tale in February and March of 1931. On August 26th, 1930 Wolfgang von Gronau and his crew completed an epic flight across the Atlantic and landed in the Hudson at New York City. His plane was one of the pair used by Amundsen on his expedition, refurbished and repaired since it's previous adventure. For the rest of the year von Gonau made regular appearances in the news as he and his crew were feted at events across the United States and Europe.

Given all that I don't think it's too much of a stretch that the gleaming silver hull of the Wal was what Lovecraft pictured in his mind as the story of the Dyer expedition flowed out of his pen. It's a distinctive, beautiful plane with a sterling record of exploration and long distance flight that's perfect for the needs of the story.

Then Lovecraft adds landing skis and...poof...reality replaces the Wal with the Merkur II.

Later this week I'll go over a few of the modifications the stock Merkur II would need to bring it in line with Lovecraft's story. Ironically, most of them are the same ones our old friend Herr von Gronau was secretly carrying out on a brand new version of the Wal at the same time ATMOM was being written. Following that I'll have the new logo for the Miskatonic Antarctic expedition featuring the Merkur II.

Found Footage: Amundsen and "At the Mountains of Madness"

One of the things I enjoy about Lovecraft's work is the way it relates to actual historical events. Lovecraft wasn't shy about acknowledging the things that inspired him, and things as diverse as the exploration of Angkor Wat and Ponape to the theories of Albert Einstein influenced his writing. The way he incorporates fragments of the real world into his stories helps make the fantastic more believable even today.

In the case of "At the Mountains of Madness" he used contemporary accounts of Arctic and Antarctic exploration to help fill in the details of the ill-fated Miskatonic expedition. In particular, Roald Amundsen's unsuccessful attempt to be the first to fly to the North Pole in 1925. ATMOM is filled with details drawn from the flight, from the way fuel was cached to the use of Dornier Wal's as the party's aircraft of choice.

To an extent, I'm following in Lovecraft's footsteps with my own "From the Mountains of Madness" project. Accounts of the Amundsen expedition have been a valuable source for photographs, text, and documents in my attempt to recreate the historical record of the Miskatonic expedition to the Antarctic. That's why I was excited to discover that someone has uploaded video transfers of the old Pathe newsreels of the Amundsen adventure to YouTube.

The quality isn't the best, but what can you expect from film that was shot over eighty years ago?

Dornier Wal Manual Page

One of the nice things about my particular collecting obsession is it's flexibility. There are only a few specific items described in "At the Mountains of Madness", so I'm free to use a lot of conjectural material. Case in point: anything related to the Dornier-Wal.

Lovecraft doesn't mention the plane specifically, but the description of the expedition's aluminum hulled seaplanes matches the Wal perfectly. They were the aircraft Roald Amundsen used for his attempt to fly to the north pole and it's generally accepted by scholars that Lovecraft used contemporary accounts of the flight as an inspiration. That's why the Wal is featured on my patch, and it's one of the reasons I've started collecting Wal memorabilia. The others being that it's just an insanely cool example of period design as well as the perfect aircraft for all kinds of 30's era pulp adventuring.

It's going to be a while before I can lay my hands on an actual owners manual, so I came up with this excerpt to tide me over. It's based on scans from the real manual produced by the Marina di Pisa factory in Italy where the plane was manufactured.

Stylized Dornier Wal

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

The worst because I wrenched my shoulder on Friday and I've been in excruciating pain since then. It turned out to be a simple case of tendonitis, but even with pain killers and ice packs I've only been able to sleep for an hour or so at a time and my left arm is effectively non-functional.

The best because my inability to sleep has forced me to keep busy at the computer learning the ins and outs of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Up until Friday I've been producing all the graphics you see here with a ten year-old copy of Paint Shop Pro. Since then I've distracted myself from the red hot iron poker lodged in my shoulder by starting to explore what the Adobe products can do. As I mentioned yesterday, the learning curve is very steep, but I'm already getting a feel for just how powerful the programs are. Here's the first pure Adobe project I've completed: a stylized Dornier Wal aircraft for the new version of the ATMOM Miskatonic expedition patch.



It still needs some tweaks, but after hearing all kinds of horror stories about how difficult Illustrator was to use I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to bang this out two days after I started learning the program. One of the recurring bits of feedback from the original patch is that folks wished the Wal replaced the rather generic aircraft featured in the original. Since this graphic is probably the most complex part of the revised patch I suspect I'll have a finished version for your perusal by the end of the week.