Czech master Resin No. 185
1/72 Arado Ar 66c
|
 |
History
This turned out to be a pretty obscure type to research. My modest aviation
library had not one reference to it. That may be because I’m not
a big fan of the Luftwaffe. I got everything from Googling. “Arado
Ar 66c” didn’t yield much but “Arado Flugzeugwreke,
GmbH.” Gave me enough to start.
Arado evolved from several precedent companies started during WWI and
first used the name in 1925. The Ar 66, designed by Walter Rethel in 1932,
was Arado’s first significant production airplane. When, in 1933,
then Arado owner Heinrich Lubbe refused to join the Nazi party his company
was nationalized. In 1945 the firm was dissolved. The Ar 66 was designed
and built in direct contravention of the terms of the Versailles Treaty.
As part of a long running sham most of the nascent Luftwaffe’s planes,
including the Ar 66, were at that time given civil registrations; thus
it is that the CMR kit offers one pre-war, “civil” color scheme.
The Ar 66 was of absolutely conventional mixed construction typical
of its time. Power was provided by an Argus As 10C-A inverted, air-cooled
V-8 engine of 240 hp. A couple of sources say that up to ten thousand
Ar 66s were built by Arado and its Yugoslav subsidiary Ikarus.
Of this large number not one complete example survives. The Deutsches
Museum in Munich does, however, have the remains of an Ar 66d retrieved
from Starnberger See in mid 1983. Knut Erik Hagen, contributor to this
magazine, has provided the photos of those remains printed here along
with an article from the Munchner Merkur for Tuesday and Wednesday November
15 and 16 of 1983, which article friend Andrew Bertschi, of IPMS-Seattle,
has summarized for me as follows:
“A well known German recovery firm from Dusseldorf had been
searching Starnberger See for a yacht that sank during a regatta in
May of this year. Their electronics turned up, instead, an airplane
near the buoy set to mark the sunken yacht.
“Starnberger See is a large lake SSW of Munich. The plane
had crashed near the town of Tutzing on the western shore. Older Tutzingers
recall seeing a plane go down in flames after being shot at by US fighters
very late in the war. The plane’s flight log indicated it was
built in 1936 and the time of the crash was 08:30 but with no date given.
The plane was carrying containers of gasoline with no evidence of the
stash of Himmler’s gold enroute to Switzerland as had been rumored
for many years.”
The only differences that I can discern between an Ar 66c and an Ar
66d is the “d” had a gun ring mounted over the rear cockpit.
The Kit
This is another typically excellent kit by CMR. The rib, stringer and
fabric effect on the surfaces is especially well done. The fit of the
lower wing to the fuselage is absolutely seamless!
Conclusion
A great kit but of, to me, a very obscure subject. The kit is really
very well done and I hope it sells well.
References
|
|
