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The Arado Ar 198 was a short-range reconnaissance aircraft designed to the same specifications as the Focke-Wulf Fw 189 but that never progressed beyond the prototype stage.
The Ar 198, Fw 189 and Blohm und Voss Bv 141 were all built to satisfy a German Air Ministry specification for a tactical reconnaissance aircraft to replace the Hs 126. The new aircraft was to carry a crew of three and to be faster and better armed than the Hs 126, and to be able to carry 441lb (200kg) of bombs.
Blohm and Voss responded with a very unusual asymmetrical aircraft, and Focke-Wulf with the twin-boom Fw 189. Only Arado produced a conventional aircraft. The Arado Ar 198 was a single engined, shoulder-winged monoplane, with a normal pilot's cockpit above the wing and a fixed undercarriage. Its only unusual feature was that it carried a second cockpit in the ventral position, below the wings. This was heavily glazed, giving the crew an excellent all-round view below the aircraft.
The only Ar 198 was completed by 1938. At first it was the favoured design, partly because of the radical design of the Blohm und Voss design and the twin-engines of the Focke-Wulf aircraft, but early tests revealed that the Ar 198 suffered from poor handling. Work on the aircraft was soon abandoned, and it would be the Fw 189 that entered service.
Aircraft of the Luftwaffe 1935-1945, Jean-Denis G.G. Lepage.
Combines a good background history of the Luftwaffe with a comprehensive examination of its aircraft, from the biplanes of the mid 1930s to the main wartime aircraft and on to the seemingly unending range of experimental designs that wasted so much effort towards the end of the war. A useful general guide that provides an impressively wide range of information on almost every element of the Luftwaffe
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