History
The history of seaplanes begun just before World War I. At the time, there was very little number of airfields which could serve the aircrafts. Some people decided they can utilise long water bodies, like lakes, rivers or seas as a sort of "runway". The first floatplane, which took off in March 1910, was the French "Le Canard" (Duck) designed by Henri Fabre. The invention was quickly spotted by military. The increasing range of the warship's guns led to the situation when the gunners had to fire them beyond visual range, and firing one's guns first was crucial to win the battle. In March 1912, French Navy has reconstructed torpedo boat tender "Foudre" into a seaplane carrier. This was not an aircraft carrier as we know today; instead it launched the aircraft from its bow, but the aircraft could not land back on the ship - it would land on water and be recovered by ship's cranes and lifts system.

The idea has quickly spread throughout the world's Navies. Seaplanes were perfect "eyes" of the warships. In addition to reconaissance and artillery spotting, they could perform torpedo or bomb runs against enemy's ships. Sometimes they were even used as fighters, though the latter was uncommon; drag created by the floats and flying boat's hulls ment they were outclassed by land or carrier-based aircrafts.The launching method didn't change between wars; the seaplane was launched from catapult and recovered from water after landing. Normally, up to four seaplanes were carried by a battleship, while smaller cruisers carried one pair of them.

In 1933, after Hitler took power in Germany, Reich's Ministry of Aviation (RLM) looked for a shipborne aircraft that could replace the Heinkel He 60 biplane. One of the companies who joined the project was the Arado Flugzeugwerke. It presented a two-seat (three-seat in some versions), radial engine-powered aircraft in two float configurations: with a large single central float under the hull plus two wing floats and with two big floats under the hull. The first one proved rather unsuccesful (during one of the test an engine sheered off from the hull), but the twin-hull-floats configuration was just what Kriegsmarine was looking for. It was adopted and named Arado Ar-196.

Soon the Ar-196 became a favourite of all Kriegsmarine pilots. It was easy to flight, stable both in the air and on the waves and its range allowed it to fly long, lone sorties during which it could find and engage hostile ships before returning to its carrier. It recieved a nickname "Mädchen für alles" (Girl for everything) from its crews. The only complaint was the low bomb payload - it could carry only 100 kgs of bombs (typicaly it carried 2x50 bombs under wings). But it was enough if the enemy was already damaged by Arado's carrier ship or other German vehicles. On May 5th 1940 two Ar-196s forced a British submarine HMS Seal to surrender. Seal was already damaged by German mines and the crew was exhausted after emergency resurface. The floatplanes kept the sub from escaping, while the trawler took it to Denmark and after some reparations it was renamed U-B and used for some time by Kriegsmarine. However the reparation costs turned out to be too high and the sub was abandoned. The only value derived was the HMS Seal's torpedo launchers design, copied and incorporated into German U-boots.

The largest ships to carry Arado seaplanes was the German battleship Bismarck and its twin ship, Tirpitz. Bismark used its four Arado's for reconaissance and artillery guiding. Some of them have also engaged in dogfights with PBY Catalina flying boats, spying the Bismarck. When it became obvious that the Royal Navy is after her, vengeful after the loss of HMS Hood sunken by Bismarck, the captain ordered Ar-196s pilots to take all the footage of the clash between the ships, Bismarck's war diary and other documents to safety, but it turned out that one of the shells has destroyed ship's catapults. Unable to save the documents, the German sailors simply dumped them to the sea.

When most of the Kriegsmarine's ships which could carry Ar-196s were destroyed, they were shifted to coast guarding and submarine hunting.

Three of Germany's allies - Finland, Romania and Bulgaria - also recieved some Ar-196s. Bulgaria and Romania used them for maritime patrol, lacking ships which could launch them on the sea. Finland also performed raids against Soviet positions, carrying special forces behind Russian lines and landing on lakes. Of about 541 Ar-196 built, two survive to this day, though one is in very bad condition.

The kit
Before I start the review, I'd like to say about something that I call "flash disappointment" (pun intented). It occurs to me every time I see an exceptional amount of flashes on the sprue. These are small pieces of plastic, which - during the process of model making - has flown out of the form into the spaces between the form's halves if these were not tight enough. Removing them is simple, but boring task. So you open your model's box, you take the pieces out and you see the flashes, and you think "holy tank, there's so many of them... it'll take eternity to remove them all" (especially since some are in hard-accesible areas). So you leave the kit and it lies somewhere in the box, waiting for better times... Then you open the box again and think "Hmm, maybe there's not that much flash after all" (especially if you were making some cheap Mastercraft model in a meantime) and start the assembly.

So, what we have in box. OK, what we DON'T have. We don't have one (or more) big sprue(s) like in most cases. The pieces are randomly joined with plastic bars and judging from the damages on some of them, especially hull and floats, they've detached from the "sprues" while still in the box. Before assembly, I had to check if everything (or at least most crucial pieces) is still in place.

The kit is a repack of Airfix's model from 1970s, and you can see it in the piece's quality. They are fairly detailed, but despite a tight fit in some places, there are very large holes visible between parts, so you'll certainly need putty. Some pieces are fragile, i.e. the floats supporting beams. But there are also more positive sides, i.e. the ailerons are separate from the wing, so you can install them in up or down position, which certainly adds to the kit's look. Also, the upper and lower halves of wings and floats are all separated, so it's easier to paint them before assembly.

Some pieces looked pretty weak, i.e. pilot's seat, machine guns, bombs or the engine. I replaced the pilot's seat with one from Hawker Hurricane, which looks slightly different, but isn't so horribly wide. Same goes for the engine - I used one from F4U Corsair. Though BWM 132 and P&W R-2800-21 Double Wasp look somewhat different, when hidden behind the propeller and engine cover the differences aren't very visible. Unfortunately I had no replacement for machine guns.

Initially, I wanted to make a simple camouflage, consisting of "upper green + bottom blue" combination, but then I dared to try using the masking tape to make some two-tone camo. I wasn't much optimistic, though, since my previous experiences usually ended with destroyed painting scheme and scrubbing the paint off the plastic.
But this time... it came out quite nicely There are some places where the paint went beyond the tape, but from above it's very good for my first succesful attempt. I used two tones of green: Humbrol 150 for the lighter parts and the same paint plus some panzergrau for the darker areas.
Unfortunately in some areas the paint came off in a way I didn't notice it before making photos. They'll be corrected later, right now I'm too tired to do this.

Since most of the models present the Ar-196s in German markings, and I wanted something original, I looked for the list of them in foreign service. I could choose between Romania, Finland and Bulgaria. I happened to have markings of all, but first - Romanian were of bad quality (Mastercraft's -_-), besides I also want to have a Henschel Hs-129 in Romanian markings, and Finnish... well, I just didn't like the idea (no offence, Fins). The Bulgarian markings come from the Pantera's Fi-156 Storch set which I didn't finish because of the bad instruction quality. They are not historically accurate, though - they should be all of the same size, and all of them should have black frames around them (only the bottom wing side decals have them). I also didn't care for the accuracy of camo; though the surviving Bulgarian Ar-196 ([link]) suggests it was a single-tone camo (it might be a post-war museum painting), other sources show that it used two-tone camo, just like the aircrafts of the Luftwaffe.
I omitted the warning decals, because I tried to apply some and they fell off, so it didn't look good to have one step with warning and another without.

Model: Airfix
Paints: mostly Humbrol
Scale: 1/72