Arado Ar 234 C with Arado E.381 “Julia” by Dragon
1/72 scale
Kit No. 9005
Cost: $32.00
Decals: One version – Luftwaffe
Comments: Engraved panel lines; detailed cockpit; includes Arado E.381 miniature rocket fighter: option for reconnaissance camera in rear fuselage
History
The Arado Ar 234 B “Blitz” (Lightning) was the world’s first operational jet bomber and reconnaissance aircraft. The first Ar 234 combat mission, a reconnaissance flight over the Allied beachhead in Normandy, took place August 2, 1944. With a maximum speed of 735 kilometers (459 miles) per hour, the Blitz easily eluded Allied piston-engine fighters. While less famous than the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters, the Ar 234s that reached Luftwaffe units provided excellent service, especially as reconnaissance aircraft.
Development of the Ar 234 began in 1940. The German Aviation Ministry issued an order to Dr. Walter Blume, technical director of the state-owned Arado concern, to design and build a reconnaissance aircraft propelled by the turbojet engines then under development by BMW and Junkers. Rüdiger Kosin led the design team. Largely free from Air Ministry interference, Kosin created a high-wing monoplane with two turbojet engines mounted in nacelles under the wings. The rear fuselage contained two downward-looking reconnaissance cameras.
To reduce weight and free space for larger fuselage fuel tanks, the initial prototype series dispensed with a conventional landing gear in favor of retractable skids mounted beneath the fuselage and nacelles. The airplane would taxi and takeoff atop a wheeled trolley that the pilot jettisoned as the jet left the runway. Ground crews would recover the trolley and refurbished it for the next flight. This arrangement would prove short-lived. Although design work and extensive wind tunnel testing of scale models with the trolley and skid configuration would continue throughout 1942, on December 28 of that year, the RLM Technical Department issued instructions for the development of a retractable landing gear, specifically to allow for development of a bomber variant. Prior to that time, the prototype was thought to be that of a reconnaissance platform only.
In response to the RLM Technical Office directive, Kosin and his team enlarged the fuselage slightly to accommodate a conventional tricycle landing gear and added a semi-recessed bomb bay under the fuselage. To allow the pilot to act as a bombardier, Kosin mounted a Lotfe 7K bomb sight in the fuselage floor ahead of what was called a spectacle-type control column, which the pilot could swing out of his way to kneel and use the bomb sight. A Patin PDS autopilot guided the aircraft during the bombing run. The pilot-bombardier used another periscope sight during shallow-angle, glide bombing.
Engine problems repeatedly slowed flight testing of the first Ar 234. BMW and Junkers both experienced trouble building jet engines in quantities sufficient for both the Me 262 and Ar 234 programs. Although Arado completed the Ar 234 V1 airframe in late 1942, the Messerschmitt aircraft took priority and claimed the trickle of flight-ready engines that Junkers managed to turn out. Consequently, the Ar 234 V1 did not fly until July 30, 1943. The V9, the redesigned version with retractable tricycle landing gear. did not fly until March 12, 1944.
The bomber version, designated Ar 234 B-0, became the first subtype built in quantity. The Air Ministry ordered 200 Ar 234 B’s and Arado built them at a new Luftwaffe airfield factory at Alt Lönnewitz in Saxony. The factory finished and delivered all 200 airplanes by the end of December 1944 but managed to roll out another 20 by war’s end. The initial order had called for two versions of the Ar 234 B: the B-1 reconnaissance aircraft and the B-2 bomber but Arado built only the B-2 version. The company then had to convert a number of B-2 airframes into reconnaissance aircraft.
The Four-Engined Ar 234C
Plans called for more advanced versions of the Arado jet, including the Ar 234 C powered by four BMW 003 A-1 engines and fitted with a pressurized cockpit. Initially built with four individual engine nacelles, it was initially unsuccessful due to difficulties with the airflow. A modified four-engined version with two enlarged nacelles each containing two engines on each wing met with success, but was developed too late to enter production in quantity. The Ar 234 C was, however, the most aerodynamically advanced and the fastest jet aircraft of World War II, being some 35 mph faster than the Ar 234 B. The first successful flight of the C series was on October 16, 1944.
While the combination of aircraft depicted by this kit never entered production, they represent what was in store for the Allies had the war continued deeper into 1945. For more detail on the Ar 234’s combat record, see the review of the Ar 234B. The subject of this kit, an Ar 234C equipped with a rocket-powered Ar E381 interceptor, is essentially a Luft ’46 aircraft, since it never entered service. But it would likely have been deployed against Allied bomber formations with perhaps greater effect than the Messerschmitt Me 163, since the Ar E381 would not have had to expend fuel getting airborne and could immediately go on the attack, carried aloft by the Ar 234, which was already moving at attack speed. However, only 14 Ar 234 Cs left the Arado factory before Soviet forces overran the area in which the Arado factory was located. Prototypes for the more advanced Ar 234 D reconnaissance aircraft and bomber with provision for a second crewman were being built but not completed at war’s end.
The deteriorating war situation, coupled with shortages of fuel and spare parts, prevented KG 76 from flying more than a handful of sorties from late March to the end of the war. In most instances the Ar 234 was immune to interception from Allied fighters, unless a pilot was caught unawares. Like the Messerschmitt Me 262, the Ar 234’s superior speed allowed it to break off an engagement at will, and it was generally only vulnerable upon takeoffs or landings when its jet engines could not be forced to accelerate quickly, unless the pilot was willing to risk the strong likelihood of a flame-out and crash.
When the war ended, there was a race by the victorious Allies to seize as much German jet technology as they could get their hands on. The Arado Flugzeugwerke and test airfields, with the sole exception of Wesendorf, fell to the Russians. But examples of the aircraft were almost exclusively deployed in the West, so what Arado bombers could be captured intact were divided among the Americans, British and French. It would not be until March 1946 that the Russians would locate an intact Ar 234 at Damgarten, in what was then East Germany, northeast of Rostock on the Baltic coast.
Source: www.luft46.com
The Arado E. 381
Arado submitted its E.381 rocket-fighter proposal to the RLM (German Air Ministry) in late 1944 in response to a call for a parasite fighter design. By that point in the war, successive military defeats in East and West were increasing the pressure on Germany, and the Allied bombing campaign was systematically dismantling German infrastructure. In addition to Arado’s proposal, Messerschmitt submitted four, and Sombold and Zeppelin submitted one each.
Arado’s E.381 was the most promising of the lot. It evolved through several different designs, each improving on the last. All versions were basically an armored tube with a small Walter 509B rocket engine providing limited power, and all versions were to glide to the ground and land on a landing skid and slowed by a deployed drag parachute. It was planned to have a similar mission profile to the Messerschmitt Me 163, with the exception that it was to be carried aloft beneath an Arado Ar 234C-3 jet bomber.
The entire fuselage was protected by a 5mm armored shell. The cockpit was very cramped, with the pilot laying in a prone position with a removable 140mm (5.5 inch) armored glass screen mounted in front of him. Alongside the pilot’s legs were two C-Stoff (one component of the rocket fuel) fuel tanks and by his feet a single T-Stoff fuel tank. The aircraft could only be entered from a hatch above the cockpit, so the pilot had to enter the E.381 before the aircraft could be attached to the carrier Ar 234C-2 and had no way to escape in case of emergency. Its armament was a single Mk 108 30mm cannon, and reportedly, provision was also made for six RZ 65 spin-stabilized air-to-air rockets.
The Kit
Appearing close on the heels of Dragon’s 1993 release of its Arado Ar234C-3w/V-1 Huckepack, the Arado Ar 234C with Ar 381 “Julia” was issued in 1994 and is classified as a re-box of the Huckepack kit, and it is, insofar as it is also a kit of the four-engined version of the Ar 234. However, this kit acts as a mother ship for a very different kind of weapon: the rocket powered experimental Ar 381. The Ar 381 mini-fighter, every bit as fast and every bit as lethal as the Messerschmitt Me 163 due to its use of the same exotic fuel, the highly toxic and explosive mixture of T-stoff and C-stoff, required a pilot to lay in a prone position, similar to the Berlin B-9 and Henschel Hs 132 designs.
Dragon’s four-engined Ar 234C is injection molded in grey plastic and consists of 86 parts, each one crisply molded and bearing engraved panel lines where appropriate, with a detailed cockpit tub featuring exquisite raised detail on side instrument panels, with a small main instrument panel to match. The cockpit tub and nose wheel well are integrally molded as a single part, and there separately molded parts for the control wheel, rudder pedals and ancillary instrumentation. Each twin engine nacelle consists of six parts. In general, the level of detail is unusual for 1/72 scale, but frequently encountered in Dragon kits.
The Arado E.381
The small rocket-powered Ar 381 consists of a mere 8 parts, and while it features engraved panel lines, it is disappointingly devoid of any interior detail, lacking even the most rudimentary controls or even a part for a padded couch on which the pilot would have to lay in a prone position. Its very design underscores Germany’s sheer desperation as 1944 dragged into 1945 with the strategic situation growing worse by the week. It cannot have been a popular aircraft, for the pilot was in even closer proximity to the tanks containing its highly caustic fuels than he was in the Me 163. A glance at the E.381 schematic underscores how extremely dangerous this aircraft was, more to German pilots than their enemies.
Conclusion
While it was a formidable development in the air war, the Arado Ar 234 came too late in too few numbers to affect the outcome of World War II. It was a revolutionary new bomber, an offensive weapon appearing at a time that Nazi Germany needed more fighters than ever in a losing defensive struggle against the overwhelming onslaught of Allied airpower. Had it appeared in strength prior to the Allied invasion of France, targeting bomber bases and invasion marshaling areas in England, it might have been instrumental in tipping the balance of the war in the West. As for the Arado E.381, like many other late war Luftwaffe designs, it never had its chance to prove what it could do. It likely would have been another technological development that temporarily struck fear into the hearts of Allied air crews, but given Germany’s dwindling resources, it would not have altered the balance of the air war. This kit is highly recommended for both the technological innovation it represents, and the desperation that nearly drove it into existence in the skies over Germany.
References
www.militaryfactory.com
www.luft46.com