Plovdiv (Krumovo) Museum (PDV / LBPD) Bulgaria - August 1992:
One of the 3 remaining Arado 196's, of course there is no longer a copy of the 10 single float type B prototypes:
Arado Ar-196A-3, serial number 219.
Of the 541 examples built of this 1937 reconnaissance model, 12 were flown from Varna by the Bulgarian Navy during WWII. This one was almost destroyed in a post-war purge against Nazi artifacts, but was hidden.
It is now one of only three complete examples in the world, the other two being in the USA.
The other two were recovered by chance from the Prinz Eugen before it was used as a nuclear test target:
At the end of the war, on 27 May 1945, the Prinz Eugen and the light cruiser N�rnberg - the only surviving large German ships - were escorted by the Royal Navy cruisers HMS Dido and HMS Devonshire to Wilhelmshaven harbour.
On 13 December, the Prinz Eugen was assigned as a prize to the United States, which sent the ship to Weserm�nde. The USA was not particularly interested in having the ship, but rather in preventing it from being acquired by the Soviet Union. The cruiser was therefore integrated into the US Navy in a "miscellaneous ship" class as USS Prinz Eugen with the hull number IX-300.
She was present during two nuclear tests of Operation Crossroads - the Able 21 kT bomb test on 1 July 1946 and the Baker 23 kT underwater explosion on 25 July - at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1946, where she served as one of 90 target ships. Slightly damaged by the two nuclear explosions (she is located about 1 km from point 0), she is transferred to Kwajalein Atoll, where the damage was not repaired due to nuclear contamination. On 29 August 1946, the US Navy retired the Prinz Eugen.
At the end of December 1946, the ship was in a very bad condition. On 21 December, she began to list severely. A repair team did not have time to arrive, and the US Navy decided to beach the ship to prevent a sinking. But on 22 December, the Prinz Eugen capsized and sank with its tanks containing about 3,000 tonnes of fuel.
In addition to the wreck, which has become an attraction for scuba divers2, several parts of the ship have been preserved. One of her propellers can be seen today at the Laboe Naval Memorial near Kiel in Germany. Her bell can be seen in the National Museum of the United States Navy. Finally, two Arado Ar 196A-5s that were on the cruiser at the end of the war are in American collections. 623167 is part of the Paul Garber Collection and 623183 is part of the Willow Grove Collection.
In November 2018, operations to pump out the oil still present in the ship's tanks after 72 years, and now increasingly corroded, are being undertaken to prevent possible pollution of the atoll in the event of a typhoon.
THE ARADO 196
The Arado Ar 196 was the last combat seaplane built in Europe. It had become obsolete by the end of the Second World War, but during the war this aircraft served Germany well in all theatres of operation. It flew in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as well as the Mediterranean, Baltic, Aegean, Black and North Seas.
When the Third Reich came to power in 1933, the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) was equipped with the Heinkel He 60 biplane. This type had served in the Spanish Civil War and had excellent performance at sea, but was slow, poorly armed and very vulnerable at the start of World War II. An intermediate type, the Heinkel He 114, had poor water handling characteristics and slightly better flight performance than the He 60.
In the autumn of 1936, the Technical Office of the Reich Air Ministry (RLM) issued a specification that called for a two-seat aircraft powered by a single 800-900 horsepower engine with a single or two floats.
Heinkel chose to continue trying to improve the He 114 but Arado, Dornier, Gotha and Focke-Wulf responded to the specification. Arado proposed an advanced monoplane design called the Ar 196 and the RLM ordered four prototypes (including two "B"). However, conservative elements in the Technical Board continued to favour biplanes over monoplanes and awarded Focke-Wulf a contract to build two more conservative aircraft, the Fw 62. The RLM subsequently cancelled the Fw 62 when the Ar 196 design demonstrated a clear superiority over its biplane competitor.
HE 114.
FW 62
Arado delivered the first two prototypes in the summer of 1937. Both were equipped with twin floats. Two more prototypes (B) soon followed, but these aircraft carried only one large central float and two small outrigger floats. Laboratory and water tests did not prove conclusively that one configuration was significantly better than the other. On landing, the single float held up better than the twin floats because it was directly attached to the fuselage, the strongest part of the aircraft. However, the twin floats had more stability when taxiing and manoeuvring. Weight and drag were also comparable, so the RLM asked Arado to prepare both types for production.
RLM officials awarded a pre-production contract for 10 Ar 196A-0 double floats and Arado built the first one at its Warnem�nde factory and delivered it to the Kreigsmarine in November 1938. The Shakedown tests left the naval authorities very happy and in June 1939, Arado began delivering the first production seaplanes (designated the Ar 196A-1) to the fleet.
At the outbreak of hostilities, the Kreigsmarine had selected many of its finest warships, including Admiral Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Prinz Eugen to receive the Arado 196.
The Ar 196 aircraft flew well armed with a 20mm MG FF gun in each wing, a 7.9mm MG 17 machine gun in the nose of the fuselage and one or two 7.9mm guns in the rear cockpit. The aircraft could also carry a 50 kg (110 lb) bomb under each wing.
The Arado Ar 196 was first taken on board the 'Admiral Graf Spee' when the specialist trading aircraft embarked at Wilhelmshaven in August 1939. For four months the ship sailed the South Atlantic in search of merchant ships and launched its two Ar 196 catapults.
The Arados projected the battlecruiser's 'eyes' hundreds of miles away to search for potential targets. They found most of the 11 British casualties on the battlecruiser.
Many Ar 196s carried out coastal patrol missions from land bases. One notable action occurred on 5 May 1940, when two Ar 196A-2s from Aalborg, Denmark, captured a British submarine. HMS 'Seal' was laying mines in a narrow waterway called Kattegat when she hit one of her own mines. Attracted by the commotion, the Arados patrols attacked the submarine with guns and bombs and inflicted such damage that the boat could not be submerged.
One of the Arados landed next to the wounded submarine and its captain surrendered to the pilot. Other Ar-196 units operating along the French coast of the Bay of Biscay successfully intercepted RAF Whitley bombers attacking German submarines heading for their areas.
The battleship Bismarck launched an Ar-196 in an unsuccessful attempt to chase an RAF Catalina that was observing her. Later, when Bismarck's situation seemed hopeless, an attempt was made to fly the ship's Ar-196s to France with letters from the ship's sailors and the ship's log. A malfunction of the catapult prevented this mission from being carried out.
Arado 196 in its hangar on the Bismarck.
Ar-196 was not a fighter aircraft but 26 aircraft based near the Bay of Biscay flew patrols to intercept RAF Whitleys conducting anti-submarine patrols. 12 July, 3 August and 6 September 1942. Probably the last air victory of an Ar-196 in the Bay of Biscay occurred on 29 January 1943. An Ar-196, piloted by Oberleutnant Heinz Wurm and ground gunners shot down an A-20 Boston of 226 Squadron RAF. During this fight, the FW-190s shot down three Spitfires and lost one.
These operations typify the roles and capabilities of the Arado float plane. Not the most famous German aircraft of the war, the Ar 196 served ably, if unobtrusively, almost everywhere German forces went to sea. It was the main German maritime reconnaissance aircraft and its counterpart in the US Navy was the Vought OS2U Kingfisher.
Production was slow but steady throughout the war and the Kriegsmarine accepted only 94 aircraft in 1942. The Germans prepared a French factory at St. Nazaire to reinforce Warnem�nde's efforts, but this company built only 10 aircraft before transferring production to the Fokker factory in Amsterdam. The Netherlands.
By the end of 1943, Fokker had become the main manufacturer. The Ar 196 became increasingly vulnerable to the faster and better armed Allied aircraft, which were going deeper and deeper into German-controlled territory. The RLM finally ended production in August 1944. Besides the German Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, Romania and Bulgaria also used the aircraft in limited numbers.
The final and definitive version was the Ar 196A-5. The NASM collection contains this type of aircraft.
Only three complete Ar 196s remain out of a total of 526 aircraft in production, excluding prototypes and pre-production aircraft. The Bulgarski Vozdushni Voiski Muzeum in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, displays an Ar 196A-3, one of the twelve Bulgarian Navy aircraft operating during WWII at Varna on the coast.
The Allies recovered two others from the German battlecruiser 'Prinz Eugen' when it went to Copenhagen, Denmark. The US Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida, has one and the other belongs to the National Air and Space Museum.
The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was the largest German naval vessel to survive World War II. The Prinz Eugen is best known for sailing with the battleship Bismarck and as one of the ships that built the Channel Dash. The Ar-196A-5 did not enter service until 1943, so these aircraft were not involved in these battles. The main mission of the Ar-196 was to spot artillery. The Prinz Eugen bombed Tukum on 19 and 20 August 1944. The Prinz Eugen carried out artillery support operations from October 1944 to April 1945.
The Ar-196 at Paul E. Garber's installation, with its wings removed
Arado Ar 196 A-5 at the NASM Silver Hill Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in July 1980
Ar 196A-5, (Wk. Nr. 623167) coded + HG, T3 + BH, belongs to the National Air & Space Museum. The Allies recovered two Ar 196A-5s found on board the German battlecruiser Prinz Eugen when it surrendered at Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ar 196A-5 (Wk. Nr. 623183) coded T3 + CH is the second of these two aircraft and is being restored by the US Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.
The Norwegian Historical Museum in Sola, Norway, displays the fuselage frame of an Ar 196A-2 from the sunken German battleship Bl�cher.
Arado Ar 196A-3 (Wk. Nr. 1003), parts stored in a Swedish Air Force museum.
When the US Navy took custody of Prinz Eugen, they were more interested in the catapult system used to launch the seaplane than in the Ar 196A-5, but they saved both aircraft anyway. The Ar 196A-5 (Wk. Nr. 623167) in the MSNA has only 14 hours of operational flying time and the US Navy pilots added another four hours during testing and evaluation at the Naval Air Materiel Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The US Navy obviously repainted the aircraft with markings copied from a different aircraft. This seaplane bore the code letters GA + DX (Wk. Nr. 68967). Today, the Ar 196A-5 in the National Air & Space Museum still bears the paint and markings of GA + DX. After years in storage, the Navy transferred the aircraft to the museum in 1961, where it is now preserved.
The two Arado Ar 196A-5 seaplanes were recovered from the German cruiser Prinz Eugen by US forces. The Arado Ar 196A-5 (Wk. Nr. 623167) is stored at the Paul E. Garber facility of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, awaiting restoration. Ar 196A-5 (Wk. Nr. 623183) has been in storage with the National Museum of Naval Aviation (NMNA) in Pensacola, Florida. This aircraft is currently on loan to the Aeronauticum Museum in Nordholz, Germany.
14 June 1946, US Operation Crossroads.
TinTin and the mystery star:
The choice of a German model for the seaplane is not innocent: the Arado 196 . This choice, which is very controversial today, was justified because of the publication of the album in 1942 under the German occupation...
My friend Sergio at work!
https://www.laroyale-modelisme.net/t143 ... evell-1-32
