Arado Ar.68E - Wartime users

The Arado Ar.68E was a single-seat biplane fighter, that was a contemporary of other famous biplane fighters of the 1930s like the Italian Fiat Cr.32, the British Gloster Gladiator or the Russian Polikarpov I-15. It was intended to be the successor of the excellent but already aging Heinkel He-51 which was very popular among the pilots of the Luftwaffe thanks to it's excellent flying capabilities.

In order to convince the doubtful pilots of the Luftwaffe Ernst Udet decided to organise some mocked-up combats between an Arado Ar.68 and a Heinkel He.51, Udet flying himself the Arado. In this fictional dogfight, the He.51 found itself outmaneouvered in every count as the Arado appeared to out-turn, out-climb and out-fight the Heinkel without further effort and so, some months later the Jg. 134 "Horst Wessel" was the first unit to be reequiped with Arado Ar.68.

That way, the Arado Ar.68E progressively replaced the Heinkel He.51 until the much better Messerschmitt Bf.109 was fully developed and improved.

When the war started, the Ar.68 had already been fully replaced by the Bf.109 and it had been relegated to the night fighter role until the winter of 1939-1940 and to the advanced trainer role.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arado_Ar_68
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighter
3. http://histaviation.com/ar_68.html