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The Wiking started to life as a 1937 project for a 24 passenger flying boat airliner to operate between Berlin and New York. The type was then revised as a long-range maritime reconnaissance type and was the largest flying boat to enter operational service in World War II. There were eight prototypes, the first of them flying in September 1940. The Bv 222B was the unrealized civil model, and the military version was planned as the Bv 222C, of which only four Bv 222C-0 pre-production examples were completed. The prototypes entered transport service in mid 1941, mainly in the Mediterranean, and from 1943 were revised for the reconnaissance role and supplemented by the four pre-production boats. The boats then served over the Atlantic, Baltic and Arctic regions. Only four boats survived to the end of the war.
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