page_title: Spanish seaplane carrier Dédalo
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Spanish seaplane carrier Dédalo / History
caption_attribution_description: Start eines Cierva-Autogiros von der Dédalo
context_page_description: Dédalo was a Spanish seaplane and balloon carrier, the first of two ships of the Spanish Navy to bear this name. She entered service in 1922 and was written off in 1936, after taking part in the Second Moroccan War, where her aircraft were instrumental to the successful landing of Franco-Spanish forces at Al Hoceima.
context_section_description: Dédalo was originally the German steamer Neuenfels, built in Britain in 1901. In October 1918, towards the end of World War I, she was seized along with five other German ships interned at Spanish ports at the time, as reparations for Spanish ship losses to Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare during the war. Neuenfels was given the temporary name "España No.6", until transferred to the Spanish Navy in the autumn of 1921. The Spanish Naval Aeronautics had been interested in acquiring a seaplane carrier for some time, and "España No.6" was accordingly renamed Dédalo, then spent five months in Barcelona from December 1921 to be converted into a seaplane tender at a cost of 8 million pesetas.
  Based in Cartagena, Dédalo participated in the Rif War until 1925, with her seaplanes carrying out bombing raids in support of the amphibious landing at Al Hoceima.
  After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in April 1931 she joined the Spanish Republican Navy. On 7 March 1934 aviation history was made when Juan de la Cierva, the inventor of the autogyro, performed a perfect landing onto Dédalo with a model C. 30 autogyro registered G-ACIO, near the port of Valencia; half an hour later it took off from her deck, after a short run of just 24 metres. This was the first rotorcraft to take off and land on the deck of a ship.
  Dédalo was decommissioned in 1934, and was struck in April 1936, but the Spanish Civil War prevented her from leaving her homeport of Cartagena until 1 March 1940, when she was towed to Valencia for scrapping.
caption: The first rotorcraft to take off and land on the deck of a ship, 7 March 1934
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