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The Arado Ar 195 was a development of the Arado Ar 95L, designed for use from the aircraft carriers being planned for the German Navy in the 1930s.
The Arado 95 was designed as a twin float biplane, to replace the Heinkel He 60 as the catapult aircraft on German aircraft carriers. The first two prototypes flew in 1936, and six were sent to Spain to serve with the Condor Legion. However it lost out to the Heinkel He 114, and didn’t receive a German order. It was sold on the export market, with a batch of a landplane version, the Ar 95L, being sold to Chile.
This landplane version also became the basis of the Ar 195, which became the first aircraft built to serve as a carrier borne interceptor and light bomber on the German carriers that were being planned. It kept the basic structure of the Ar 95, with all metal construction, and swept back slightly staggered wings. Like the Ar 95L it had a fixed undercarriage, but the clumsy looking trousers that surrounded the legs of the Ar 95L were removed. The wheels were carried in spats, connected to the aircraft by struts. It was powered by a BMW 132 radial engine. It had an arrestor hook and catapult equipment.
The biggest change came on the cockpit. On the Ar 95 the pilot’s position was below the trailing edge of the upper wing, with a gap between the top of the canopy and the upper wing. On the Ar 195 the cockpit was moved forward, into the gap between the upper wing and canopy, with the windscreen just in front of the leading edge of the wing. The canopy filled the gap between the upper wing and fuselage.
Thee prototypes were built – V1 D-OCLN, V2 D-OBBB and V3 D-ODSG – and flew in 1937. They were all given Travemunde IDs, suggesting that they were all trialed there. However the Ar 195 was considered to be inferior to the Fieseler Fi 167. Compared to the float plane Ar 95 it had a higher loaded weight, but the removal of the floats meant it was significantly faster, but had a lower service ceiling and shorter range.
Arado moved onto the Ar 197, itself based on the Arado 68 biplane. However work on the one carrier to be launched, Graf Zeppelin, was very slow and often paused completely. When work briefly resumed in 1942 all of the older aircraft designs were replaced, with the Arado biplanes replaced by the Junkers Ju 87C.
Engine: BMW 132 radial engine
Power: 880hp
Crew: 2
Span: 41ft 0 1/8in
Length: 34ft 5 3/8in
Height: 11ft 9 3/4in
Empty weight: 5,248lb
Loaded weight: 8,257lb
Max speed: 175mph
Climb Rate: 14min to 13,120ft
Service ceiling: 19,680ft
Range: 404 miles
Armament: One fixed forward firing 7.9mm machine gun and one flexibly mounted rear 7.9mm machine gun
Bomb load: 1,544lb torpedo or similar weight of bombs
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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