Arado Ar 80 The Arado Ar 80 was a pre - World War II fighter aircraft , designed by Arado Flugzeugwerke to compete for the " Luftwaffe " s first major fighter contract . The Ar 80 was uninspiring in terms of performance and also suffered a number of failures . The contest was eventually won by the Messerschmitt Bf 109 , and the Ar 80 prototypes ended their days as test aircraft . Design and development . With the Nazi rise to power in February 1933 , a plan was put into place to dramatically expand the " Luftwaffe " . The new and highly - political " Reichsluftfahrtministerium " ( RLM ) demanded that the large industrial firms cooperate , keeping construction as secret as possible . Arado Flugzeugwerke , under the direction of Erich Serno and Felix Wagenführ , largely stopped being a designer of aircraft and increasingly became a production facility for other companies . However , the company had just completed the Ar 65 biplane fighter . Several orders were placed for the Ar 65 , and a follow - on Ar 68 model . This made Arado one of the few companies with actual fighter design experience , and they were considered for future developments During 1933 , the " Technisches Amt " , the technical department of the RLM , concluded a series of research projects into the future of air combat . One of these was " Rüstungsflugzeug IV " for an all - metal monoplane single - seat fighter aircraft , replacing the Ar 64 and Heinkel He 60 biplanes then in service . The plane needed to have a top speed of 400 km / h ( 250 mph ) at 6 , 000 m ( 19 , 590 ft ) which it could maintain for 20 minutes , while staying in the air for a total of 90 minutes . It was to be powered by the new Junkers Jumo 210 engine . It also needed to be armed with at least three machine gun s with 1 , 000 rounds each , or one 20 mm cannon with 200 rounds . The plane needed to keep wing loading below 100 kg / m² , which is a way of defining its ability to turn and climb . The priorities for the plane were level speed , rate of climb , and maneuverability , in that order . Hermann Göring sent out a letter in October 1933 asking for a " high speed courier aircraft " in order to start the work , and in May 1934 , the actual R - IV request was sent out and made official . In addition to Heinkel and Arado , Focke - Wulf , and Bayerische Flugzeugwerk competed . They had to deliver three prototypes for head - to - head testing in late 1934 . Although Blume was officially the director of design at Arado , it was Rethel who did most of the early work on the design . Rethel was well aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the monocoque technique , but the company had never built such a design and was thus at a distinct disadvantage in relation to Heinkel who had used it on their He 70 " Blitz " design from 1932 . However he felt that he could not only design a successful monocoque aircraft , but in fact make one that was both lighter and easier to build than the techniques being used at other companies . His solution was to use two sets of skinning plates formed in long strips running front to back along the plane . The first set of plates was formed roughly into the shape of a C , which a small flange at the open ends of the C where they could be easily riveted to the hoop bulkheads . Using this system he was able to eliminate one more piece of internal structure , the stringers that would normally run between the bulkheads . He used a second set of sheets that were flat , so they could easily bend front - to - back . They were cut into teardrop shapes , which exactly fit into the gaps between the main stringer s . Not only did this system allow for the " perfect " aerodynamic shape , but in theory it was also lighter and easier to build . The system looked so hopeful that other parts of the aircraft ' s design were allowed to be heavier and less risky as the weight savings in the fuselage should compensate . The rest of the plane was conventional . The forward fuselage and inner wings were formed up from steel tubing with removable aluminium sheeting over it , the outer wings were aluminium formers and skinned with aluminium on top and fabric on the bottom . Like the Heinkel designs , the wing included a reverse - gull bend to shorten the landing gear legs , but unlike the Heinkel it was almost straight on the leading and trailing edges instead of the more complex elliptical planform favoured by the Günter brothers . In order to avoid cutting the outer wing formers with outward retracting gear , Rether decided to have the landing gear retract directly to the rear . To lie flat , the wheel would have to be rotated through 90° as it retracted , with its mainwheel resting atop the lower end of the strut as with the contemporary American Curtiss P - 36 Hawk fighter design . To do this , Rethel placed the main oleo strut inside a larger tube that was mounted to the pivot point on the lower leading edge of the box - spar . As the gear retracted a small arm would pull on a lever mounted to the oleo , turning the leg inside the larger tube . In general terms , the resulting design was very similar to the Hawker Hurricane of roughly the same era . Prototypes and testing . The design , now known as the Ar 80 , was completed without the aid of Rethel ; he left the company in 1934 to join BFW leaving Blume in charge of the project . The plane was designed to mount the Jumo 210 engine , driving a wooden two - blade fixed - pitch propeller . However , this engine was not going to be ready until the contest was supposed to be over , so all of the contestants looked for other engines to fill the hole . In this case Arado proved to have the advantage , as they had already purchased a 391 kW ( 525 hp ) Rolls - Royce Kestrel VI engine for use on their Ar 67 design . The engine had less than optimal supercharging which led to poor performance for the Ar 67 . The V1 prototype first took to the air in the spring of 1935 , one of the first of the planes in the contest to do so . However , one of the company test pilots lost control at low altitude only weeks later , and V1 was written off . The landing gear had already proven to be a real problem in these few short weeks . It continued to stick half - closed when retracted , although luckily it returned to the down position for landing . Repeated attempts to find the problem were fruitless , when they put the plane on blocks in the hangar it would always work flawlessly . Eventually it was found that the air pressure on the front of the strut in flight made the oleo jam in its tube so it couldn ' t rotate . Another problem discovered during construction of the V1 was that Rethel ' s monocoque technique in fact turned out to be much heavier than expected . Some of this was a problem in the actual design ; since the sheets ran the length of the plane , they had to be as thick as the thickest point on the entire plane . More traditional designs could use lighter or heavier gauges in various places . The main problem , however , was that the design required considerably more rivets than expected , and as a result the plane was overweight . V2 was rushed to completion but the Jumo was still unavailable . In order to give the contestants some sort of realistic engine , the RLM had traded Rolls - Royce an He 70 for four 518 kW ( 695 hp ) Kestrel V engines . Although the V was the same basic engine as the VI , it had much better supercharging and was in fact the most powerful inline engine of the day . The various companies competed heavily for access to these engines for their prototypes . Perhaps some idea of the future outcome can be seen in the fact that BFW received two , Arado and Heinkel one each , and Focke - Wulf none at all . V2 was completed with the Kestrel by autumn of 1937 , and started company testing . Once again the gear proved to be a problem . Blume immediately blamed all of the problems on Rethel , after noting that he was always skeptical of the design . He decided that the performance problems of having fixed gear would be offset by its lighter weight , and the Ar 80 then reverted to using a well - spatted and faired set of gear similar to those used on their various biplane designs . Several months were lost in the conversion . The use of the fixed gear didn ' t save as much weight as expected and the plane was still 16 % over the design weight at 1 , 630 kg ( 3 , 590 lb ) empty . Fully loaded the plane was 2 , 100 kg ( 4 , 630 lb ) even without armament , which made it underpowered even with the Kestrel V . Drag was also higher than expected . It ' s no surprise then that the plane proved to have very disappointing performance , reaching only 410 km / h ( 255 mph ) . In early 1936 , the Jumo engines finally arrived . The 210 had even less takeoff power than the Kestrel , but its altitude performance was comparable . Speed did increase with this engine at higher altitudes , but low - level speed and climb performance both dropped . Arado argued that the fitting of a constant speed propeller would boost both , with the speed climbing to 425 km / h ( 264 mph ) , but this was not attempted before the plane was sent off to the contest . Although the Ar 80 had been one of the first planes to fly , the continued problems with the gear and engine supply meant it was one of the last to arrive for the head - to - head fly - off . It was delivered to Travëmunde on 8 February 1936 , and later moved to meet the rest of the planes at Rechlin - Lärz Airfield in March . It was clear all along that the plane had no chance against the Heinkel and BFW designs , a fact that Arado was made officially aware of after only one month . By this point , V3 was already finished . In order to try to save weight , the design had removed the gull - wing and replaced it with a " flat " one , requiring slightly longer gear legs . It also mounted the Jumo 210C with the constant - speed propeller , which boosted speed to 410 km / h ( 255 mph ) . By this time , the RLM had already given up on the design , so the plane was not sent for testing and instead hangared at the Arado plant . In 1937 , the V3 was resurrected as a flying testbed for several experiments . It was fitted with a second seat behind the pilot for an observer , and also added an enclosed canopy . The plane was first used for testing a 20 mm cannon firing through the spinner , making it the first German cannon - armed fighter . This system , called the " " motorkanone " " - an armament format pioneered with the 37mm cannon - armed French SPAD S . XII in World War I - would become a standard feature of most German inline engined fighter designs during the war . In 1938 , the V3 was rebuilt once again , this time to test a new Fowler Flap design Arado was intending to use on their Ar 198 and Ar 240 . Testing showed that the flap was so effective that the lift distribution along the wing changed radically , so a further modification was added to " droop " the ailerons along with the flaps . Testing continued for some time in this form , resulting in the " Arado traveling aileron " and " Arado landing flap " .