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The Dornier Rs.I was a large three-engined biplane flying boat, designed by Claudius Dornier and built during 1914-5 on the German side of Lake Constance. It never progressed beyond taxi-ing trials as it was destroyed in a storm. The Rs.I was completed by October 1915 and rolled out at Seemos for trials. On 23 October, during a taxi test, the port propeller and/or gearbox parted company with the aircraft causing damage to the gearbox mountings and the upper wing. The opportunity was taken to move the outboard engines into nacelles identical to the centre engine and mount them between the wings, on an independent structure with cat-walks for engineers to attend to engines in flight. This gave much better clearance for the propellers from spray, which was very likely to have been the cause of the port gearbox/propeller incident. Taxi trials recommenced but with little success till on 21 December 1915 a Foehn wind blew up during trials. Unable to beach the giant flying boat, attempts were made to ride out the storm on the lake, but the moorings gave and the Rs.I was dashed to pieces on the lakeside rocks. This giant aircraft is noteworthy for the construction materials used, let alone the sheer size of it, being the largest aeroplane in the world at the time of its launch

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