The Arado Ar.68E arrived in Spain as an experimental night fighter. Just another war-experiment conducted by the Luftwaffe during that war. Those experiments consisted in adding searchlights to some fighters in order to achieve better night vision and were conducted both in Spain and Germany.
As it was intended to be just an experiment, only three Ar.68E were sent to Spain, where they served in the Condor Legion and were based at La Sénia airfield, in southern Catalonia where they intended to be used as twilight provisional night fighters. They were coded 9-1, 9-2 and 9-3 and apart from being used as night fighters, they also performed some ground attack missions during the Battle of the Ebro in 1938 and the nationalist conquest of Catalonia during January-February 1939. After the war ended, they were handed over to the nationalists air force, and one of them became the personal airplane of Cpt. Javier Murcia Rubio who later would be the commanding captain of the 5th Blue Squadron, inside the 15. Spanische Staffel dependant of the Jg.27.
Two of those Ar.68 were still flying in 1945 when their serial code was changed to C-11 and we believe that their roundels were changed too, from a complete black circle to the French style roundel featuring the Spanish colours, that were also present in the pre-Republican airplanes.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arado_Ar_68
2. Salamander Book - The Complete Book of fighters
3. http://histaviation.com/ar_68_in_spain.html
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