Two Arado Ar 196s were brought to Penang in Japanese-occupied Malaya aboard the auxiliary cruisers "Thor" and "Michel" in the early 1940s. In March of 1944, along with a Japanese Aichi E13A, these seaplanes formed the newly-created East Asia Naval Special Service to assist both the German Monsun Gruppe and Japanese naval forces in the area. The aircraft were painted in Japanese livery and were operated by Luftwaffe pilots under the command of Oberleutnant Ulrich Horn. The first Arado Ar 196 to fall into allied hands was an example belonging to the German cruiser , which was captured in Lyngstad, Eide, by a Norwegian Marinens Flyvebaatfabrikk M.F.11 seaplane of the Trøndelag naval district on 8 April 1940, at the dawn of the Norwegian Campaign. After being towed to Kristiansund by the torpedo boat , it was used against its former owners, flying with Norwegian markings. At 03:30 on 18 April, the Arado was evacuated to the UK by a Royal Norwegian Navy Air Service pilot. The plane was shortly thereafter crashed by a British pilot while on transit to the Helensburgh naval air base for testing. At the end of the war, at least one Arado Ar 196 was left at a Norwegian airfield and kept in use as a liaison aircraft by the Royal Norwegian Air Force for a year on the West coast. During 1944-45, Soviet forces captured numerous Arados along the Baltic coast of Poland and Germany. At Dassow a spare parts depot was recovered also. After repairs, thirty-seven Arado Ar 96 aircraft fitted with Soviet radio equipment were integrated into the aviation element of the Soviet Border Guard. They were sent to Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific coastal areas, serving until 1955. The Aircraft Historical Museum, Sola, Norway, has on display an Ar 196 A-2 fuselage frame raised from the wreck of the German cruiser Blücher in Oslofjord. Another aircraft is known to lie in the Jonsvatnet, a lake near Trondheim in Norway. A number of wartime German aircraft have been recovered from the lake, but the Ar 196 remains undisturbed as its crew were killed when it crashed there in 1940 and it has the status of a War Grave. A wrecked Arado Ar 196 A-3, believed to be D1 + EH, was snagged by a fishing trawler off the island of Irakleia in 1982 at a depth of 91 meters.