MPM 48047 Arado Ar 231 V-1

A light German seaplane designed to operate with submarines from the Second World War. Type XI submarines, which were to be equipped with on-board reconnaissance aircraft, were to be built as part of the German Navy's armaments program. The Oberkommando der Marine (Supreme Naval Command) wrote to the Luftwaffe General Staff in writing on February 25, 1938 with an order to build a reconnaissance aircraft capable of landing on board U-boats. It was to be a metal plane with two floats, one engine, a flight speed of approx. 150 km / h, a range of 900 km, capable of being disassembled into parts that would fit into two containers with dimensions: 6 m in length and 1.2 m in diameter and two containers 5 m long and 0.7 m in diameter and one container 5 m long and 1 m in diameter. The order was transferred to the Arado company, which started its first construction works in 1939 after the requirements were specified by the Kriegsmarine command. At the beginning of 1940, a contract was signed for six prototypes of the Ar 231 aircraft. The Ar 231 V1 aircraft took off for the first flights on July 25, 1940. It was a single-seat, single-engine, strutted high-wing wing with a two-float undercarriage. The canopy of the wings was inclined, which allowed the wings to be folded back so that they overlapped one another. The lowered vertical stabilizer was also intended to facilitate folding and unfolding of the wings. After folding, the plane was placed in a tube-shaped container with a diameter of 2 m. The folding and unfolding processes took six minutes. During tests, it turned out that such a small plane has unsatisfactory flight properties. The Ar 231 could not take off with winds exceeding 37 km / h. In addition, the U-boat commanders did not like the need to stay on the sea surface in daylight for at least 10 minutes before the plane was hanged. At that time, trials were already underway with the Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 gyroplane taking off from a platform mounted on board the U-boat, which were extremely successful and further development work on the Ar 231 was abandoned. Technical data (prototype data): Top speed: 148 km / h; speed, ceiling: practical 3000m, maximum range: about 500 km