The Arado Ar E.340 was a twin-engined dive- and tactical-

medium bomber A medium bomber is a military bomber aircraft designed to operate with medium-sized bombloads over medium range distances; the name serves to distinguish this type from larger heavy bombers and smaller light bombers. Mediums generally carrie ...

, designed by

Arado Flugzeugwerke Arado Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturer, originally established as the Warnemünde factory of the Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen firm, that produced land-based military aircraft and seaplanes during the First and Second World Wars. Hi ...

at the request of the

Reich Air Ministry The Ministry of Aviation (german: Reichsluftfahrtministerium, abbreviated RLM) was a government department during the period of Nazi Germany (1933–45). It is also the original name of the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus building on the Wilhelmstrasse ...

in 1939 to compete for a production contract for the ''

Bomber B Bomber B was a German military aircraft design competition organised just before the start of World War II to develop a second-generation high-speed bomber for the ''Luftwaffe''. The new designs would be a direct successor to the ''Schnellbombe ...

'' fast bomber design competition, but the project was cancelled.

Design and development

The Reich Air Ministry ordered the aircraft to replace the

Junkers Ju 88 The Junkers Ju 88 is a German World War II ''Luftwaffe'' twin-engined multirole combat aircraft. Junkers Aircraft and Motor Works (JFM) designed the plane in the mid-1930s as a so-called '' Schnellbomber'' ("fast bomber") that would be too fast ...

and

Dornier Do 217 The Dornier Do 217 was a bomber used by the German ''Luftwaffe'' during World War II as a more powerful development of the Dornier Do 17, known as the ''Fliegender Bleistift'' (German: "flying pencil"). Designed in 1937 and 1938 as a heavy bombe ...

bombers by 1943. Four manufacturers submitted plans to the Air Ministry, which chose the Arado design. The engines were positioned in a unique twin-boom arrangement connected only through the wing assembly, a configuration which offered the crew better visibility. The Arado E.340 was designed with a central fuselage containing all four crew members. The cockpit and rear compartment were glazed and pressurized. The Jumo engines and landing gear were mounted to the load-bearing wing centre-section. The tail of the aircraft was a unique design, where the tailplane did not connect the two booms but was cantilevered outwards instead, each similar to the asymmetric BV 141B booms and tail arrangement. Also similarly, this would have provided the rear gunner with a clear range of fire directly behind. The fuselage extended forwards beyond the engines, with the gunners situated behind the cockpit, ahead of the bomb bay and wing spars. The MG 151 cannon in the tail of the central fuselage would have been controlled with remote aiming through periscopes. There were also two remote-controlled ''Fernbedienbare Drehlafette'' FDL 131 13mm

gun turret A gun turret (or simply turret) is a mounting platform from which weapons can be fired that affords protection, visibility and ability to turn and aim. A modern gun turret is generally a rotatable weapon mount that houses the crew or mechani ...

s to be placed above and below the fuselage. The E.340 was one of the steadily growing number of later-war military airframe designs designed to use the troublesome

Junkers Jumo 222 The Jumo 222 was a German high-power multiple-bank in-line piston aircraft engine from Junkers, designed under the management of Ferdinand Brandner of the Junkers Motorenwerke. Such was the projected performance of the engine compared to con ...

engine. Otherwise an innovative design, these powerful engines were selected because they would have allowed the Arado E.340 to carry the required payload of within a relatively compact airframe, despite their still-strictly developmental nature. As the engines were cancelled, the project would likely have failed due to the lack of engines of suitable power, and could have struggled with the amount of high grade fuel needed to power them. Ultimately, the entire Bomber B project was cancelled, primarily as a result of the failure to develop the required engines.

Specifications

References

{{Authority control E.340 Abandoned military aircraft projects of Germany Twin-boom aircraft High-wing aircraft Twin piston-engined tractor aircraft