Arado Ar 234 - When the Arado Ar-234 Blitz jet bomber first appeared in European skies, most Allied airmen did not know what it was. Many people have never heard of jet engines, let alone a jet engine. Few still knew that the Ar-234 was the shining star in Adolf Hitler's galaxy of wonder weapons, the super-secret and super-technological arsenal that the Führer hoped would reverse the decline of the Reich.
Hitler, of course, never asked Don Bryan's opinion. On March 14, 1945, at high altitude east of the Rhine Bridge, American fighter pilot Bryan was returning home from a bomber escort mission when he spotted an Ar-234 flying to bomb the Remagen Pontoon Bridge.
Arado Ar 234
At this point, an American fighter pilot may have known more about Hitler's secret plane than anyone else on the Allied side. Although most Allied pilots had never seen him, this was Bryan's fourth encounter with Arad. In December 1944, he became the first Allied pilot to ever see it in the air.
Cutaway] Arado Ar 234 Blitz
After studying drawings of the aircraft in a Group Intelligence document, Bryan spotted two more Ar-234s later that month. On the third sighting, a Luftwaffe fighter plane crossed his path below him, flying left to right. Bryan went after Arad, but he backed away. Then he realized that while his North American P-51 Mustang fighter was fast, the Ar-234 was almost 100 mph faster.
The usual soup over Germany turned into bright sunshine on March 14. Eleven German jet bombers from KG 76 (Kampfgeschwader 76) attacked the newly built floating engineering bridge south of the Ludendorff Bridge, which was the last conventional bridge. it was on the Rhine when it was captured on March 7, 1945 by soldiers of the US 9th Armored Division.
Bryan, 352nd Fighter Group, was the air ace of the Bodney Bluenosed Bastards and commander of the group's 328th Squadron. Bryan saw Arado pull back from the bridge and maneuver in a tight turn to avoid a formation of US Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters. This maneuver compromised the jet bomber's strongest feature, its superior speed, and Bryan managed to position himself so that the German had to fly towards him.
Built at an airfield in Germany, this Arado Ar-234 V13 represents the 13th prototype aircraft and the version that set the production standard for the twin-engine jet bomber.
Arado Ar 234 Blitz: Volume 2 (volume 62): Murawski, Marek: 9788364596650: Books
Bryan dived on top of the bomber and fired a .50 caliber burst that disabled its starboard engine. Now Bryan could stay behind him and keep shooting. “I don't know what the hell was going through his head,” Bryan said in an interview, “but he should have gotten off the plane while he was high enough. I think he was afraid I would shoot his parachute, which I would never do."
The pilot of the Arad, Hauptmann (Captain) Hans Hirshberger, waited too long to release his sunroof and tried to escape from the cockpit. He crashed the plane. This was his first and only combat mission.
Capable of reaching speeds of 540 mph, the Arado Ar-234 Blitz was the fastest fighter aircraft in the world, slightly faster than its cousin, the jet engine Messerschmitt Me-262.
It was the world's first operational jet bomber and in many ways the most advanced secret weapon of the Third Reich. It was important enough that Hitler mentioned it several times during staff meetings with his military leaders. It particularly angered Hitler that the mostly wooden British De Havilland Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft was fast enough to approach Germany almost with impunity. The Führer often boasted to his staff that the Ar-234 jet was even faster than the propeller-driven Mosquit.
Arado Test Pilot Inside The Cockpit Of An Ar234
The Ar-234 was a product of the German company Arado Flugzeugwerke. It was Arad's response to the German Air Ministry's 1940 request for a high-speed reconnaissance aircraft. Walter Blume led Arad's engineering team.
Blume was a fighter ace in World War I, scoring 28 aerial victories and being seriously wounded during a combat mission. Blume seemed at times amused and at times angry, but he had studied aeronautics for more than two decades and was up to date on jet engines, which some heralded as the wave of the future. He was responsible for all major design features of the Ar-234, assisted by engineer Hans Rebeski and others.
On their drawing boards, they envisioned an extremely clean airplane. It had a smooth, smooth, stringy outer skin. It had brilliant lines and finally a tricycle chassis. Where most airplanes had a bulging or stepped cockpit windshield, the nose of the Ar-234 was completely smooth and covered in glass, like the American heavy bomber Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The engine layout was similar to the more famous Me-262, with long, deep-throat nacelles under the wings inboard.
The design was codenamed the E370, and the new aircraft was designed for an intended top speed of 485 mph, which it eventually easily exceeded. Its planned range of about 2,000 miles was slightly less than what the Air Ministry wanted, but Berlin officials liked the design and ordered two prototypes, called the Ar-234 V1 and Ar-234 V2.
Arado Ar 234 C 3
The success of a new machine depends on the engine it is intended for. The engine was a Jumo 004 axial turbo engine, designed by a team led by Dr. Anselm Franz of the Junkers Aircraft Company. It eventually became the world's first jet engine to be put into production and put into service. But the first jet engines developed by the Germans and the British—while the Americans were third in jet engine development—were clumsy, unreliable, and prone to problems.
Work on the design of the Ar-234 aircraft went smoothly. The Junkers Jumo 004 turbo engine was another matter. Tests that began in October 1940 were delayed by ongoing technical problems, including vibration of the compressor blades. Steel blades had to be developed to replace the original alloy blades. However, the early versions of the engine sputtered, smoked and purred. One exploded on the exam table. The vibration problems lasted until the second overhaul of the stator blades. These and other problems delayed the engine, as did the Messerschmitt Me-262 and Ar-234 jet fighters - for unclear reasons, the latter more than the former.
Once operational, the production version of the engine, the 004B-1, was given 1,980 pounds of thrust, which was similar to the turbo engine Frank Whittle had developed for the British. Even then, Jumo was usually only 10-25 hours. Like all turbojets, it was slow to respond to the pilot's hand on the throttle.
An early version of the Arado Ar-234 jet bomber is assisted by a carriage during takeoff. The device fell when the plane took off. Note the slips used for landing purposes.
The Survivors: Arado Ar 234 Blitz
The aircraft's landing gear was not part of the original design. Blume's design team was aware that the Luftwaffe was not entirely satisfied with the aircraft's range and durability. In order to increase the internal fuel capacity, the wheels were initially omitted. Early versions of the Ar-234 took off with three-wheeled bogies and landed on grassy surfaces using skids that worked well. To increase thrust during takeoff, the Ar-234s used Hellmuth Walter-designed liquid-propellant rocket boosters (RATOs), one mounted under each wing.
The Ar-234 was not as big as it looked. When American ace Don Bryan first saw one, he thought it was an American A-26 Invader. But the A-26 had a wingspan of 71 feet and was designed for a crew of three. In contrast, the Ar-234 had a wingspan of just over 46 feet. The crew consisted of one pilot who, as Bryan later said, "must have been a very busy and very lonely man."
The pilot boarded by lowering the port side retractable step, climbed the steps and entered through the skylight. This hatch could be ejected, but there was no ejection seat, and the pilot's prospects of getting out of Arad under any circumstances were not good.
The pilot controlled the traditional throttle and rudder pedals, and the transparent plexiglass provided him with an excellent view in all directions. Between the pilot's legs was a complex Lofte 7K tachometer bomb controller. When the bombing began, the pilot had to turn the control gear and steer the aircraft through the optical sight using the bomb control knob. Alternatively, he could fly a carrier-based aircraft and mount a periscope sight on the cockpit roof, derived from the type used on German tanks, and use an associated bombing computer for dive attacks. Despite the very narrow undercarriage that became standard after the skids were abandoned, the Ar-234 performed well when
Arado Ar.234b Blitz German Twin Engine Jet Bomber
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