Arado Ar E.561

Arado Ar E. 561 History

Arado Ar E. 561 was already in the design as early as 1937. Classified as a heavy fighter, the type would be a matter of life and death based on its combination of firepower and performance. World War II brought the need for specialized destroyers and heavy fighters capable of launching almost anything in the sky.

The Ar E. 561 was originally designed this way, but the complex engine arrangement certainly delayed the project, so much so that it became one of the many creations of Luftwaffe aircraft during the war - nothing more than a fun paper airplane design.

The Arado Ar E. 561 is designed around a solid hull that contains seating for three of the four crew members (the fourth crew member is a gunner who operates the lower rear machine gun) . Although the E. 561 appears to have two engines - one for each wing - in the extended nacelle position, the engines are actually located in the middle section of the fuselage. The variable-pitch propellers will be operated by these tail engines via shafts extending above the wing roots and pseudo-nacelles extending beyond the leading edge. The idea behind this arrangement is that if one engine fails mid-flight, a single functioning engine will be able to switch over and power both propellers - essentially allowing the plane to continue flying without losing any engines completely. However, this arrangement was limited to running only two engines at half speed, which would severely degrade the performance of larger aircraft.

The design concept of the rear shaft-controlled propeller system was only tried (with some success) in the underpowered Bell P-39 Airacobra - a single-seat light fighter. The tail of the E.561 follows the example of the Messerschmitt Bf 110 "destroyer" - and an aircraft with some similarities to the E.561 - with two vertical tail surfaces on a large horizontal plane.

Armament is a combination of offensive and defensive systems. 4 x MG 151 20mm cannons will be placed directly under the cockpit seating area for a devastating forward attack.

The rear of the vehicle will be defended by two 13mm heavy machine guns - two from the rear cockpit position and one from the ventral, down, rear-facing gun position in the stern.

Due to its pure "drawing board" existence, no performance data for the E. 561 is available. In any case, it's likely to be a bloated "Tweener" design with no performance specs comparable to the Allied agile single-seat fighter, but it could be a formidable platform for destroying bombers.

Given the limitations of wartime Germany, attempting to mount the engine on the fuselage to achieve a more streamlined shape would represent a very complex internal work for engineers to design efficiently.

Specification

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Production

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